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Menasha Packaging recently rebranded itself to more clearly communicate its services to its customers.

Companies that endure for 160 years do so by adapting when necessary. Business cycles, customer behavior, priorities, and much more change during such a time span. Menasha Packaging (www.menasha.packaging.com) has always adjusted when needed, the most recent example coming in October 2009 when it sought to rebrand itself to more accurately reflect its products and services.

As part of its rebranding efforts, the company streamlined its internal structure. The result is a corporate framework that allows its own employees and customers to understand the company better. "We are changing how the world sees us and how we see ourselves," says Mike Waite, president. "As an industry leader, our products and services have evolved beyond the 'corrugated box' niche where many of our existing and potential customers categorize us."

Changing with the times

The origins of what is now Menasha Packaging Company, with 1,800 employees and more than 20 facilities in North America, have nothing to do with printing. What ultimately became Menasha Corporation (Menasha Packaging's parent company) began as a wooden pail factory. The company has endured through a Civil War, the Great Depression, two World Wars, and, most recently, the Great Recession. Through it all, the company has transformed itself and realized new business opportunities at every turn. By the end of the Civil War, the company was not only producing wooden pails, but had become a full woodenware manufacturer. During the period spanning from 1916 through the 1930s, the company transformed itself and first entered the corrugated box business. The packaging corporation motivated its employees to learn this new business and develop expertise in paper, which at that time was a new product for the company. In 1995, the company reorganized into seven business groups, including the packaging group.

Today the company is much more than a corrugated box manufacturer. Its capabilities include printing and design and it can provide digital, offset, preprint, flexo, and litho-lam printed products. "There is not a process in the market right now that we can't produce," Waite asserts proudly. "With printing and distribution facilities located strategically across the country, our customers get quality and consistency no matter what facility produces it."

Menasha covers a variety of industries, according to Waite, but focuses on three: food packaging, personal care products, and household products. "The reason we focus in some of those areas is, if you look at traditional manufacturing, which is where we still sell a lot of corrugated packaging, that side was shrinking," says Waite. "We had to step back and say, 'Where is there a more stable base of business for us to try to create a position for us in the marketplace?' Those three segments I referred to have helped stabilize the company during the last five or six years."

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