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Kirsten, Finn and Jörn Rausing Tetra Laval Group

Mention the brand to almost anyone in the world, and they will most likely identify it with the carton packages used for distributing beverages such as milk and juice. Behind the success of the Swedish Tetra Pak company has been the . Three generations have worked to create the multibillion-dollar company Tetra Pak, a company that is now one “Doing something part of the Tetra Laval Group. With the vision that nobody else has and drive of at the beginning, done before is the entrepreneurship of the second generation actually quite hard.” and the strategic leadership of the third, each generation has played a crucial role in Tetra Pak’s success. Ruben Rausing, Founder, Tetra Pak

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Family businesses are often strongly connected to a town or region. And for Tetra Pak, that connection is with . Although the company’s headquarters are now in Switzerland, Tetra Pak still has many facilities in the city, which many would say is Tetra Pak’s spiritual home.

Developing the Tetra Pak flling machines

As a true visionary, Ruben foresaw a time when packaging Ruben Rausing founded Tetra Pak in 1951. would become a much more important part of the food and drink distribution chain. And in the 1930s, Åkerlund & Rausing grew rapidly under his leadership. The big breakthrough for In revenue terms, Tetra Pak is the largest packaging and food the company came in 1944, when an engineer working for the processing equipment company in the world. The privately held company came up with the idea of a tetrahedron-shaped carton company, despite being headquartered in Switzerland, is very to store milk. Ruben backed the idea and fled the patent for much a product of Sweden. And it is now overseen by the third the “Tetra Pak.” And a few years later, Tetra Pak was set up as a generation of the Rausing family. subsidiary of Åkerlund & Rausing.

Tetra Pak employs more than 23,000 people in over 80 Although coming up with the idea of the Tetra Pak package may countries; in 2015, it had net sales of €11.8b and sold more have been a eureka moment for Ruben and his colleagues, it than 180 billion Tetra Pak packages, made using more than then took nearly 10 years to develop a suitable material that 8,000 packaging machines. Tetra Pak is instrumental in the could be produced on a large enough scale to make the carton processing and packaging of many different kinds of food a commercially viable product. As Ruben once said, “Doing and drink. When you open a milk or juice carton anywhere in something that nobody else has done before is actually quite the world, chances are it was made by Tetra Pak. Tetra Pak’s hard.” importance to the food and drink industry has been immense. Indeed, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences Part of the diffculty in developing the packaging concept was in has said that the Tetra Pak packaging system is one of Sweden’s coming up with a machine that could continuously fll the new DeLaval is a world leader in the dairy farming industry, providing integrated milking solutions designed to improve dairy farmers’ production and animal welfare. most successful inventions of all time.

Ruben Rausing: Sweden’s great entrepreneur 01 02 03 cartons. This problem was solved by the idea of a chain-driven Managing Director of Tetra Pak in 1954, at the age of just 28. machine, which eventually became the template for all Tetra Together, over the next 32 years, the two brothers built Tetra The story of the company starts with Ruben Rausing. Born near Pak flling machines. In 1952, the frst Tetra Pak machine was Pak into the globally active multinational it has become. Much of the town of Helsingborg in southern Sweden in 1895, Ruben delivered to a dairy in Lund, and the packing of cream in Tetra the company’s growth was driven by international expansion and was to become one of the country’s greatest entrepreneurs Pak 100ml cartons started. And so began a revolution in the further innovations. of the 20th century. When he was in his 30s, Ruben set up commercial packaging of beverages. a packaging company with Erik Åkerlund called Åkerlund & Internationalization started in the 1950s Rausing. A few years later, Ruben bought out Åkerlund and Ruben’s eldest son led the technical development moved the company’s headquarters to Lund, a university city in 01 An early Tetra Pak advertisment for milk packages; 02 Founder Ruben Rausing for Tetra Pak. Hans Rausing, Ruben’s second son, joined the The frst Tetra Pak machine was exported to Germany in 1954, southern Sweden. with a wood-model of a flling machine; 03 Tetra Pack packaging in supermarket. family business soon after his elder brother. He was appointed and the frst Tetra Pak production plant outside Sweden was

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opened in Mexico six years later, in 1960. By the mid-1970s, Tetra Pak was frmly established, with operations in many countries around the world. The energy and entrepreneurship of Gad and Hans represents a classic case of the second generation taking the business created by the frst to altogether greater heights.

The group was created

In 1991, Tetra Pak made its frst big acquisition by buying Alfa Laval, one of the world’s largest suppliers of food processing equipment. Two years later, Tetra Laval Group was created, which today consists of three industry groups: Tetra Pak, Sidel (which specializes in equipment for the carbonated beverage Tetra Pak plant and offce buildings in Lund, Sweden. industry) and DeLaval (specialized in the dairy farming equipment). But no matter how successful they are, few family businesses progress in a linear way, with all the family Tetra Rex bio-based carton package. members working in perfect unity. In 1995, having left the family business two years before, Hans and his family decided to dispose of their interest in the company. This meant that Gad’s three children, Kirsten, Finn and Jörn, became the family Children drinking school milk in Vietnam. representatives on the board. By this time, the management of the business had been placed in the hands of non-family professionals. Finn, Jörn and Kirsten Rausing Few would deny that Tetra Pak’s infuence on the global Members of the Board packaging and processing sector has been immense, and that global infuence has been the product of one of Europe’s most Company name: Tetra Laval Group successful family businesses of the last 100 years. Generation(s): Third

Founded: 1951 in Lund, Sweden

Industry: Liquid food processing and packaging

Employees (2014): Approx. 33,760

Revenue (2014): Approx. €13.45b Liquid food products in Tetra Pak packaging can be found all around the world.

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