Volume is everything in cups and caps

Chances are that you're familiar with Berry Plastics, although you probably don't know it. Maybe you were in a European Taco Bell during the recent Star Wars resurrection, splurged for the commemorative cup, and marveled at the cool lenticular graphics on the side of the cup. And if you've ever decapped an aerosol container, that cap probably came from Berry.

Based in Evansville, IN, Berry Plastics has taken every aspect of its market and perfected it to near domination. As a result, Berry is the country's biggest supplier of aerosol overcaps and one of the biggest suppliers of open-top containers and drink cups. And if history is any indicator, Berry's recent entry into the housewares and lawn and garden market bodes well for continuing success.

The Building

Located near the heart of downtown Evansville, and about a mile from the sprawling (at times flooding) Ohio River, Berry makes its headquarters in a building that is, through creative restoration, simultaneously embracing the past and lunging into the future.

The building itself is actually an old cigar factory. Built in 1912, at its peak of operation, the facility employed 4500 women whose nimble fingers rolled the cigars. Berry has restored much of the original building, exposing decades-old woodwork and brick. This part of the facility holds the "brains" of Berry's business - management, administration, and computer information systems. This side of the plant is also home to Berry's nine product development engineers, all working in Pro-E. Moldmaking is done out of house, with mold maintenance done inside. Although Berry serves a custom market via such heavyweights as Taco Bell, Burger King, Gillette, and Proctor & Gamble, the company owns most of its 700 molds, and rarely ventures out on its own into the retail market. "We prefer that relationship," says executive vice president for operations Ira Boots. "We're here to service our customers, not compete with them."

The molding work takes place in one of three large molding rooms attached to the cigar factory. The first produces the one product that accounts for half of Berry's annual unit output: aerosol overcaps. With crisp 6-second cycle times running in molds up to 64 cavities, Berry produces 1.5 billion overcaps a year, by far the largest producer in the United States. The company has more than 3000 colorants from which to choose for its overcaps, many custom blended by Berry. If you want to know more, good luck. Berry's overcap dominance came via creativity and innovation, much of which is proprietary. "We'd rather keep that technology to ourselves," says Boots.

The second and third molding rooms account for the other half of Berry's business - open-top containers and cups, everything from 6-oz cups to 5-gal buckets, destined to contain yogurt, pool chemicals, tile grout, plant food, beach sand, popcorn, and more. The speed demon here is a 660-ton Husky molding 32-oz polyethylene cups. The stack mold has 12 cavities in each half, running in 8-second cycles. After each cycle a CBW Slingshot robot whips the cups out and places them on a conveyor. They are then boxed and sent to the second stage for decoration.

Berry is a high-volume producer and every phase of its operation is geared for high speed. "We like robots, we like very long runs, we like very high cavitation," says Boots. Low volume at Berry is 100,000 units. Each day, 75 truckloads of product leave the Evansville plant. High-speed robots and automation abound. Cavities are rarely blocked, they are fixed. "If we have a problem with a cavity, we take the mold out," Boots says.

After Molding

Although the company is noted for proficiently and efficiently molding cups and open-top containers, Berry is legendary for its postmold decorating. Few molders in the country can match Berry's graphics, color, and printing capabilities.

Decoration starts with one of Berry's 22 graphic artists. Working on Macintoshes primarily in Photoshop and QuarkXPress, the artists create the colorful images that will find their way onto the sides of cups and containers. Although Berry is physically limited to 10-color printing, thanks to color simulation the possibilities are endless. After images are designed and rendered by an artist, they are sent to the company's plate-making shop and prepared for production.

The flagship of Berry's printing shop is a one-of-a-kind, world-class, $1 million, 10-color printer. It was custom-built for Berry by Van Dam, is alleged to be the only unit of its kind in the world, and can print up to 250 cups a minute. If that's not enough, you can choose from one of Berry's 70 other multicolor printers scattered throughout the company.

The latest addition to the Berry decoration line, and just two weeks old at the time of IMM's visit, is the Therimage line. This snake-like conveyor-based system irons preprinted labels onto passing cups before boxing them. The machine, made by Avery Dennison, processes up to 60 units an hour. For many applications, if Berry can't buy the equipment it needs, the company will improvise. For the Taco Bell/Star Wars cups, Berry custom built a machine last fall that glues on the lenticular graphics for which the cups are known.

When the cups, containers, and overcaps are ready to ship, they're moved to Berry's warehouse, a cavernous space that, at 200,000 sq ft, takes up almost half of the Evansville facility. After a part is decorated and ready to go, it's boxed up and assigned a bar code by Berry's computerized material tracking system. Boots says every forklift in the plant has an onboard computer that tells the driver where to take the box or boxes in the warehouse. When a truck is ready to load, the same computer tells the lift operators which boxes to pull, starting with the oldest stock first. In the warehouse, stacked floor to ceiling with boxes and crates, the staggering news is this: "We'll turn all of this over every 10 days or so," according to Boots.

It's Good Work, If You Can Get It

Located in Indiana's southernmost city, Berry is one of the city's best employers - not because it hires a lot of people, but because of how employees are treated. This led the Evansville Chamber of Commerce to name Berry the "Business of the Year" in 1996.

What's so great? Berry's focus and dependence on good customer service involves employees in the process, empowering them to make decisions, recommendations, and suggestions on how the company performs. Berry has more than 30 employee teams, serving three basic areas: problem solving, customer service, and cross-department service. Teams are constantly evolving, shifting, disbanding, and reforming. Boots says the company is keenly aware of its employees and what they bring to the market. "There's no question, it's our people who make the difference," he says. "We have great owners in First Atlantic who supply us enough capital, and we have our 1500 employees who help set us apart from the competition."

CEO Marty Imbler says employees have a stake and say in how Berry does its job. That stake comes in the form of profit sharing for each employee. Also, each employee is required to take at least one formal education course a year - paid for by Berry.

Behind the Scenes

The company started life in 1967 as Imperial Plastics and changed its name to Berry Plastics in 1983 when it was purchased by Jack Berry, a Florida citrus grower and real estate developer. Growth since then has been via acquisition. Gilbert Plastics of New Brunswick, NJ was acquired in 1988 and relocated to the Evansville facility.

With an infusion of capital provided from the 1990 purchase of Berry by First Atlantic, a New York-based equity investment fund, growth and acquisition boomed. The Mammoth Containers Div. of Genpak was acquired in 1992. In 1995 Berry added promotional drink cup maker Sterling Products and container molder Tri-Plas. In 1996 Berry acquired the drink cup product line of the Alpha Products Div. of Aladdin Industries. And this year, Berry added Container Industries in Pacoima, CA, a small, open-top container molder.

Also early this year, Berry made headlines by acquiring one of its competitors, PackerWare, based in Lawrence, KS. The acquisition not only strengthens Berry's position as a container and cup molder, but gives the company a new market as well. Berry inherits PackerWare's line of housewares and lawn and garden products. "With our latest acquisition - PackerWare - we will be getting into the retail market," Boots says. Imbler says that sales reached $151 million last year, and should increase with the addition of PackerWare and other acquisitions.

Movement into new markets, according to Imbler, is based on Berry's existing expertise. He says Berry brings to any acquisition the economies of scale; because of this, the company likes to stay in markets that can benefit from what Berry does best. He admits some consolidation and plant closures have resulted from acquisitions in order to maintain efficiencies. Says Imbler, "Our strategy is to be the largest and best manufacturer in each of our product lines." So far, so good.