A legacy in action: How a paper-packaging manufacturer has thrived across four generations

In the late 1990s, Ingersoll Paper Box (IPB) – a fourth-generation paper-packaging producer – got a call from one of its biggest customers, saying it would no longer need IPB’s services. For 50 years, IPB, based in Ingersoll, Ont., had supplied packaging to automotive-filter company Fram, which had been acquired by multinational conglomerate Honeywell and was moving its operations.

The decision was devastating for IPB. The automotive industry accounted for about 75 per cent of its business at the time, with Fram making up the majority of that share.

“I remember my dad and I coming home – I still lived at home at the time – and we just sat there and thought, what are we going to do? This is the end of us,” says Sarah Skinner, president and owner of IPB and the fourth generation of the family to lead the business. Her dad, David, was running the company at the time. “It’s that one phone call as a family business or a small business you never want to have,” she says.

While the moment initially felt like a collapse of what the family worked so hard to build, it was part of a larger transition away from a dependence on the automotive sector, altering the company’s course from a small-town carton producer into a global player in paper packaging.

Today, IPB has grown to 80 employees and an 85,000-square-foot manufacturing facility. It’s also part of a rapidly growing industry. According to Statistics Canada, cardboard container manufacturers generated $7.9-billion in revenue in 2022, nearly double the amount sold in 2012 at $4.3-billion.

In step with the market, Sarah says IPB has doubled its sales in the past 10 years. But that hasn’t come without market disruptions – from automotive clients moving production to Mexico and looking for closer packaging suppliers, to adapting to meet the pharmaceutical industry’s changing regulations.

To adapt to these market demands and minimize risk, IPB has invested in state-of-the-art printing and production technologies and diversified its client-base by expanding to other sectors, including health and beauty, food and beverage, and cannabis. Ultimately, Sarah says the success of the family business throughout the years has been the result of good communication and shared values.

Sarah’s great-grandfather Robert founded IPB in 1922 to create packaging for his ice cream cone company. In 1940, Sarah’s grandfather Ronald formed a partnership with Fram that would dominate IPB’s sales for the next half-century.

It wasn’t until 1968 when Sarah’s father, David, joined the company that IPB began thinking globally. Around the time David took over as president in 1982, IPB inked a deal with multinational conglomerate 3M. It marked a major transition for the company – from serving local to global clients, signalling a major test in IPB’s capacity.

“We had to create a lot of packaging for them,” says David, who says IPB had to invest in additional equipment to keep up.

Later as IPB started to make inroads with pharmaceutical packaging, the company’s efforts came at a cost.

“When we got into the pharmaceutical market, we had to set ourselves apart because there’s not a lot of big companies that want to deal with a small company in Ingersoll,” says Sarah. IPB promised a quick turnaround on small orders, which meant convincing its suppliers to offer consignment on raw materials and producing its own specialized cardboard. “We always had something on the floor for certain customers,” she adds.

While David spent his tenure implementing programs to make the facility immaculate and well-organized, Sarah says she wanted to be bigger than a small-town business. “I want to be known for making great packaging for world-class companies,” she says.

Under Sarah, IPB invested in its marketing and redesigned the offices to look more professional.

Sarah’s focus on longevity was a marked shift for the business. “I had a different outlook than my dad,” she adds.

Francesco Barbera – an associate professor of entrepreneurship and strategy and the founding academic director of the Family Business Institute at Toronto Metropolitan University – says the vantage point of a business changes across generations, saying it can become easy to lose perspective of the business’s purpose.

“Those families that have a culture of trust, a culture of working together, a shared vision … these are the things that enable them to navigate that generational transition,” says Barbera.

Sarah says her vision for IPB sometimes caused tension with her dad. When the two were overwhelmed by business decisions, they’d go for lunch. “We would talk about things that needed to get done and how we were going to do it,” she says.

David agrees that communication has always been key for thriving across generations. “You don’t lose respect for the person that’s going to take over the business,” he says. “You have to respect their point of view.”

He also emphasizes the absence of pressure, saying his parents never put pressure on him to go into the family business. And he let his kids choose whether or not they wanted to be involved.

Transparent and consistent communication is especially critical when it comes to a formal transition. Barbera says having a transition plan in place is one thing – the real challenge is execution, especially when it comes to training the next generation and transitioning the incumbent generation from a direct leadership position to one broadly focused on governance and oversight.

When David retired from the business in the mid-2000s, Sarah built him an art studio in the old IPB space so he could be close to the family business. It worked for a while, says David, but eventually he fell into old habits of troubleshooting with employees on the factory floor so he stopped going in.

“It wasn’t fair to Sarah,” he says. “She’s got her style and she has decisions to make, and fortunately they’ve been right on – that’s just how it evolves … simple as that.”

– With files from Nickie Shobeiry