Radius Packaging steps forward to grow while retaining local ties

New Berlin, Wis. — For nearly 40 years, Radius Packaging was a family-owned regional blow molder. Three years ago, it was purchased by investment firm Mason Wells Inc.

While it's no longer family-owned, the company has retained its fun, friendly culture. That includes a strong commitment to the communities where it does business.

"It's the fabric of who we are," President and CEO Tom Frank said. "You're successful if you've created a company that the people within it are willing to give back to the community that they're in. And so that can be financial, that could be through volunteering, time, coaching."

Radius supports local high school athletics, blood drives, food drives, and its local fire department, youth center and homeless shelter. Education is another a big emphasis, Frank said.

"We've developed relationships with all the different school districts and tried to provide opportunity for people to learn trades and understand manufacturing — modern manufacturing with automation. We've hosted tons of tours. And we do a lot with regards to charity events to help kids get education even outside of manufacturing," Frank said.

Being active in the community is something that sets Processor of the Year finalists apart from the pack. And in Radius' case, it also earned the firm the 2022 Plastics News Excellence Award for Industry and Public Service.

"In my role, as I make decisions, my decision has an impact on every single one of our members in the organization and their families. So I have to be able to go to bed at night thinking I made the right decision for those 200 or so members and their families," Frank said.

The company was founded in 1972 by Robert Schoeneck and was known as Schoeneck Containers Inc. Robert was a blow molding pioneer: He developed his own extrusion wheel technology, and he co-founded one of the country's first blow molding companies in 1959. Schoeneck Containers focused on PVC bottles in those early days.

Robert's son Paul Schoeneck became president in 1997, and the company added 60,000 square feet of factory space in New Berlin that year, making the company seven times larger than when it was founded. A period of rapid growth followed.

Frank and other senior managers joined the company in 2014 to support strategic realignment.

The next major change happened in 2019, when the company opened a 250,000-square-foot factory in Delavan, Wis., which is about 40 miles from the New Berlin headquarters. The addition put an exclamation point on Radius' modernization effort, adding Toshiba injection molding capacity and PET stretch blow molding lines. Radius also has strong in-house design and development services.

The sale to Milwaukee-based Mason Wells came in 2020, and last year the company rebranded as Radius Packaging.

Sustainability is another strength at Radius. In recent years, that's meant shifting away from PVC and helping customers transition to sustainable materials, which includes investing in PET bottle manufacturing capacity and trials for a variety of post-consumer resins.

"It's important to align with our customers' goals, and sustainability is a big one," said Jason Kitowski, vice president of sales. "We want to be leading the industry vs. being a follower or a me-too.

"It's one thing to talk about, and another to actually do it. And we have the pieces in place. We have a facility that's got the space and capacity. We've got equity partners that are willing to make big investments for the right projects," Kitowski said. "In the next five years, there'll be a couple of products out there that we can be really excited about."

Christopher Haag, director of procurement, said that when it comes to sustainability, Radius wants to be on the front lines.

"We don't want our customer to come to us and say, 'Hey, can you tell us what we could do from a sustainability side?' We want to be the one sharing with them the ideas and opportunities that are out there.

"That means we're visiting major post-consumer materials suppliers, in high density polyethylene and polypropylene, multiple times, so we understand their business and what they're targeting," Haag said.

Radius is a big player in the regional packaging market. The company posted a record year in 2022 with unit sales up more than 10 percent.

"We had our best year ever in 2022, which was fantastic for us," Chief Financial Officer Angela Breitbach said.

That's in part because of the challenges that Radius faced last year, following the pandemic-fueled markets in 2020 and 2021, when the company saw record demand.

"2022 on the other hand, there was a lot of market dynamics that we had to negotiate and deal with, whether it was the great resignation and wage inflation, or resin markets, which finally calmed down," Breitbach said.

"I would say 2022 is by far my proudest year here. We really worked well as a team, we took care of all our members, we made sure everybody had jobs, we did a ton of training and cross-training and promotions internally. And as a company, we just really rallied together. And what started out as a difficult year for us ended really, really well," she added.

Breitbach said the company's strength is its ability to communicate, both internally and externally.

"We work really hard to make sure that everyone knows what's going on. You'll see a lot of communication on the floor. We work incredibly well as a team. And we pride ourselves on the fact that we can have fun at work and still work really, really hard," she said. "And we care about everybody here. That's really the biggest difference."

Jessica Ryan, vice president of human resources, said that starts with unique onboarding and orientation that include fun activities to get to know team members and get acclimated to the culture.

"We do a lot of events here, we have food everywhere all the time, we have events monthly for anniversaries and birthdays, we celebrate service milestones, and we have a lot of different recognition programs," Ryan said.

"I believe the Schoeneck family really instilled that in the team," she said.