By Don Mills
Few have likely heard about Emmerson Packaging, a manufacturing company headquartered in Amherst. Owned by the Emmerson family, the company has been in business for nearly seven decades. Stephen Emmerson is the company’s third-generation CEO.
While you are unlikely to be familiar with Emmerson Packaging, there is a high probability that you have one or more of their products in your household.
This is particularly true if you purchase branded products like Royale paper products, or McCain French fries or High Liner frozen entrees, or unbranded products from companies like Walmart, Costco, Sobeys or Loblaws. You see, Emmerson Packaging produces the product packaging for those companies. Indeed, the company produces hundreds of millions of packages for its customers every year.
Business Background
The company was founded in 1956 by PG Emmerson, and began as Eastern Packaging in Saint John, N.B. Eventually, the company grew to have three production facilities; One in Saint John, one in Cowansville, Que., and one in Amherst. In the early 1980s, the company decided to consolidate their facilities and, after seeking outside professional advice, chose Amherst for its consolidated facility.
The company was known as PolyCello until 2016, when it changed its name to Emmerson Packaging.
In the early days, 90 per cent of its business was regional. Today, only five percent of their business is local, the rest is elsewhere in Canada and across the United States. Importantly, 70 per cent of their business is in the U.S., which makes Emmerson as important exporter in Nova Scotia.
The company’s main production facilities remain in Amherst with a model 300,000 square foot plant, and a second 100,000 square foot facility is located in Cornwall, Ont. The company had a production facility in Kentucky in 2014-2015 but closed that facility to focus on the implementation of new SAP software, which was proving to be more challenging than expected. The company currently has 450 employees, 350 of whom work in their Amherst facility, making the company the largest private sector employer in that part of the province.
The company is especially proud of its employee retention rate, which Emmerson in a recent Insights Podcast attributed to the culture the company has developed that is focused on safe working conditions, treatment of employees, as well as well-paying jobs, pensions and competitive benefits. In terms of its labour force, the company emphasizes not the job, but the career opportunity that the company offers. It is worth noting that the company is a Platinum Club member of Canada’s Best Managed Companies, a reflection of the culture the company has developed over the years.
Capital Intensive
Most manufacturing facilities are capital intensive, and Emmerson Packaging is no different. The production process begins with resin pellets that are transformed into film by extrusion equipment. This equipment can cost between $5 million and $6 million. The highest cost equipment are the printers for the high-quality packages produced. These printers can each cost up to $10 million. Then there are the slitters to separate printed film into individual packages (about $1.5 million) and laminators ($3 million) to complete the production process.
Most of this equipment requires a long lead time to acquire, with some of the most sophisticated equipment coming from overseas. It is an expensive undertaking.
Business Evolution
Emmerson points out in a recent Insights Podcast that his company was early in the development of sustainable packaging. Currently, 85 per cent of the packaging produced by the company can be recycled. This has become an important product differentiator for the company. The company invests $2 million annually on research and development efforts to improve the sustainability and quality of its products. Emmerson was proud to mention the company has two patents from this work.
Competing with much bigger companies is a change for a mid-sized company like Emmerson, which has successfully differentiated itself from larger competitors by providing consistently high-quality products and has a reputation for driving reliable and dependable service delivery. The company expects to continue to focus its efforts on improving its productivity and efficiency through automation, like automated vehicles within their plants to move materials and parts around safely.
Emmerson is quick to acknowledge the importance of having an external board of directors (I am a past director of the company), as opposed to an advisory board that most privately held companies have as a governance model. This means as CEO, he reports to the board and is held accountable for his actions, rather than simply looking to the board for advice.
The Future
Stephen Emmerson is an ambitious individual. He measures the company’s progress on three themes: people, processes and production facilities. He points out that it is challenging to succeed in his line of business in Nova Scotia, specifically identifying the high taxes, high energy costs, challenging labour laws and transportation costs. Nonetheless, he feels that operating a manufacturing facility in a small community like Amherst has its advantages, chief among them is access to a hard-working labour force (20 per cent of which is now made up of newcomers from other countries).
As to the future, Emmerson has hopes that one or more of his sons will be interested in getting involved in and eventually assuming control of Emmerson Packaging. Regardless, the company is one of the many quietly successful companies across the region, making important contributions to our economy and the communities in which they reside.
Emmerson Packaging serves as yet another example of what is possible in our region and is a role model for others who aspire to build national or even international companies from Atlantic Canada.
Don Mills is a regular columnist with The MacDonald Notebook and the former founder and owner of Corporate Research Associates Inc. (now Narrative Research). He remains active as an advocate for change and continues to have ownership interests in several companies, including CABCO. He is also the co-host of the popular weekly Insights Podcast.
Halifax-South Shore business leader Don Mills.
