50 Year Anniversary Book - Elopak

Elopak’s Vision
We will contribute to human
health and lifestyle
– effectively and responsibly –
by becoming the leading international player in
fresh and premium aseptic
liquid food packaging.
Contents
Part of the big picture 5-7
The advent of the “paper bottle” 9-11
A vision becomes reality 13-15
A global company takes shape 17-19
Research for the breakfast table 21-23
A focus on environmental responsibility 25
The way ahead 27-28

Fifty Years of Enthusiasm
Owning Elopak has at times been a challenging and even nerve-wracking
experience – but it has always been inspiring. Admittedly, during the initial
stages, there was reason to doubt the viability of the venture. But for
Christian August Johansen – the man who turned up at JL Tiedemanns
Tobaksfabrik with a daring vision and a Pure-Pak license – capital and
business know-how were absolutely essential. One of those who saw the
potential in this business idea, and found ways to finance it, was Edgar J.
Johannesen, a senior member of personnel within the Tiedemanns group,
and a key player during Elopak’s establishment.
Fifty years down the line, it’s good to be able to say that the pioneers had
the right idea. Elopak has grown from humble roots as a little beverage
carton factory in Spikkestad into a truly global company. Recent years
have seen further progress and Elopak has made its mark with attractive
innovations in a sector characterised by tough competition from much
larger players.
In this anniversary year, Elopak is in a position to strive for further growth,
secure in the knowledge that in Ferd they have an owner that is both
demanding and dynamic. All Elopak employees should look on this as a
vote of confidence!
Johan H. Andresen (Senior)
Johan H. Andresen (Junior)

Part of the big picture...
A demanding, research-based product. Resource-saving
and highly CO2-efficient, important for ensuring food
safety, user-friendly, and with sales in the billions. And
manufactured by one of Norway’s most international
companies, a company which has acquired its own
American “mother”... Behind Elopak and the Pure-Pak
carton lies a truly fascinating story.
For the 2200 people around the world who work for Elopak,
it is nothing new that the beverage carton on the breakfast
table is a piece of advanced technology. Nor that it is the
result of science, ingenuity, commitment and hard work at
every stage of the process – from concept to the finished
packaged product lining shop shelves or refrigerated
cabinets. A product to be proud of. One has just come to
accept the fact that most consumers regard the carton as
a piece of colourfully printed, folded cardboard...
In all probability, those same 2200 people also feel a
stab of pride when they experience a Pure-Pak machine
the size of a locomotive in action, an entire little factory
that automatically and rapidly sends millions – billions –
of packages through the many complicated processes
needed to provide demanding consumers with the perfect
product for their breakfast tables. Error margins are close
to zero and there is little tolerance for downtime.
One talked about “the wonders of technology” in
earlier days. Today, most people take them for granted
without thinking about what goes on behind the scenes.
Even among Elopak’s own employees there are probably
only very few that know much about the hundred years of
development and the extensive research work behind it.
In this booklet, we devote some attention to the beverage
carton as a phenomenon – in the past, present and future
– and at the same time, think a little about the people and
the industry behind the product we have all come to know
so well. The occasion is the 50-year anniversary of the
establishment of Elopak. A rare alliance of foresight and
a willingness to go all-out and take risks gave Norway a
Pure-Pak licensee with ambitions that far surpassed
supplying milk to the local community. That the name
Elopak is itself an abbreviation of European Licensee of
Pure-Pak really says it all.
These same properties, supplemented by staying
power and financial far-sightedness – and not least, the
concerted efforts of thousands of employees in many
countries – have, over the course of the last fifty years,
transformed Elopak into a major, global company. Today,
94 percent of turnover originates from outside national
borders. Elopak is undoubtedly one of the most
international businesses in Norwegian industry, following
Looking after resources: Norwegian children learn at school
how to rinse, fold and pack together the cartons, which are then
sent to be recycled.
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 5
its 1987 take-over of the American Ex-Cell-O group’s
packaging division, and therein all rights to the Pure-Pak
system worldwide.
It’s not every day that a licensee from a small country
like Norway takes over as central licensor for a global
product. For the majority of Norwegians nonetheless,
Elopak is a well kept secret even if they come into contact
with Pure-Pak cartons on a daily basis. This is due partly
to the fact that the company enjoys a low media profile,
but it is also because a well run company with effective
products does not attract dramatic headlines.
The beverage carton and the world’s resources
On the rare occasions when packaging does attract the
media – more often than not, it is from such perspectives
as wasting natural resources, the affluent society, environmental
pollution, waste mountains...
In reality, packaging in general and beverage product
packaging in particular, are remarkably resource-saving
phenomena. Studies have been conducted which prove
that almost 50 percent of all liquid food products made in
the developing world spoils before it gets to the table, while
a proportion of the remaining 50 percent loses and
nutritional value. A main cause of this is lack of
appropriate packaging.

6 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
Global under-consumption of food product packaging
has moreover a huge negative impact on total CO2 emissions.
When you know that on average 90 percent of the
energy consumption that goes into manufacturing a litre
of milk relates to the milk itself and ten percent to the
packaging, then you don’t have to be a mathematician to
work out that even a small increase in the use of protective
packaging can produce huge environmental benefits.
In other words, the problem is not that too much
packaging is being used worldwide, but that too little is
being used!
However, packaging is not one thing. Some types are
significantly more environmentally-friendly than others;
some are indispensable to a modern society, others we
could do without.
For the people who work for Elopak, or the consumers
who come into daily contact with Elopak products, it could
be nice to know that Pure-Pak scores highly on both
environmental sustainability and usefulness. The principal
raw material in Pure-Pak cartons is cellulose, made from
trees harvested from forests in the northern hemisphere,
from areas where forests are growing. In other words,
Elopak’s products are based on renewable resources.
They do not contribute to deforestation or cutting down
the rain forest, but on the contrary to maintaining
sustainable forestry in countries such as Finland,
Sweden, Norway, Canada and the USA.
Additionally, the fibres can be recycled and used to
make new paper; where this is not feasible, the cartons
can be burned to recover energy. Of course, the carton
has a thin plastic or aluminium layer and perhaps a
plastic screw top, but these too can be recycled or burned
without producing toxic waste.
For decades, the competition between the different
types of beverage product packaging has been tough.
Glass, plastic, metal cans and beverage cartons battle
over areas of application and market shares – competition
between plastic and cartons has been particularly
hard in the dairy sector. The repercussions vary greatly
from one country to another. For example, milk in plastic
bottles is a rare phenomenon in the Nordic countries; in
Britain it is the norm. And in many countries, the distribution
between packaging types changes over time –
dependent to some extent on the preferences and habits
of the consumer, but also often the result of lobby
groups, retail-chain interests and the marketing efforts of
packaging manufacturers.
However, an increasingly more widespread
acknowledgement that the world’s CO2 emissions must
be cut provides every reason to believe that the beverage
carton will gain new ground in the years to come. Glass
bottles are heavy and energy-intensive to transport and
recycle; plastic packaging, when burned, contributes to
CO2 emissions – while the beverage carton is easy
to transport and close to CO2 neutral when it is
appropriately recycled after use.
Elopak Facts and Figures
Turnover (2006): NOK Five billion
Number of employees: 2200
Share of turnover outside Norway: 94 %
Sold in over 100 countries
Production Plants: The Netherlands, Germany, Finland,
Denmark, Serbia, Ukraine, Canada, with joint ventures in
Mexico and Saudi Arabia (blanks and/or coating);
USA (filling machines); Finland (materials handling
equipment), joint ventures in Israel and Luxembourg (screw
cap production) and Greece (plastic bottles)
Offices: Baltic States, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France,
Greece, Ireland, Israel, Italy, China, Croatia, Malaysia, The
Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Spain, United
Kingdom, Switzerland, Sweden, The Czech Republic,
Germany, USA, Ukraine, Hungary, Austria
Joint ventures: Lala Elopak S.A de C.V. (49 %), Mexico and
other Latin-American countries; Elocap Ltd (50%), Israel and
Luxembourg; Elopak Plastic Systems Hellas SA (50%),
Greece; Al-Obeikan Elopak Factory for Packaging Co. (49%),
Saudi-Arabia; Elopak South Africa Ltd (50%).
Partners and Associates: Shikoku-Kakoki Co (filling
machines), Japan; Nippon Paper-Pak, Japan; VisyPak
Beverage Packaging, Australia; Offsetec, Ecuador; Hankuk
Package Co, Korea; Taiwan Benefit Co, Taiwan

Elopak and the others
Over the course of the beverage carton’s hundred-yearlong
history - the subject of the following chapter – there
have been countless large and small manufacturers
worldwide. The majority are long gone or have been
taken over by other, larger players. Elopak too has
engaged in its share of take-overs down through the
years. The industry has experienced continuous change;
the last major restructuring took place as recently as the
end of 2006. The industrial and financial group Ferd,
Elopak’s owner, joined forces with London-based global
private equity group, CVC Capital Partners, to acquire the
Swiss beverage carton manufacturer SIG. The idea was
to merge Elopak and SIG, two companies who complemented
each other well on a product level. Together the
companies would form the world’s second largest player
in a market, which today is dominated by Swedish Tetra
Pak.
But it didn’t quite work out that way. New Zealand’s
Rank Group put forward a competitive bid that Ferd and
CVC found they could not justifiably exceed. Rank therefore
became the second largest player, while Elopak took
up position as the smallest of the big three, who together
comprise the vast majority of the global beverage carton
sector.
Consequently, Elopak is now fully focused on autonomous
development, building on and strengthening its
success over the last fifty years. We discuss this in
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 7
greater detail in the booklet’s final chapter; suffice it to
say for now that after the turn of the millennium, Elopak
established itself as the most innovative of the players
within the beverage carton sector. At the same time,
innovation work has been firmly rooted in an awareness
of the customer’s needs and wishes. This is essential for
Elopak. Its position as the smallest of the three major
players entails that it is unrealistic to base its competitive
position on high volumes and low prices. Therefore
Elopak has chosen to cultivate activities within the
premium segments for fresh and aseptic packaged
products. In order to succeed at this, it is essential to be
able to offer attractive features and added value in
relation to less expensive solutions.
And this position is in the spirit of true Pure-Pak
tradition. There is a sense of continuity in that the original
gabled carton gained ground on the basis of consumers
who wanted Pure-Pak’s user-friendliness, although some
dairies showed a preference for competing products that
were slightly less expensive.
Right enough, when the original patent expired, other
manufacturers imitated Pure-Pak in detail. And in the
past, neither Ex-Cell-O nor Elopak were overly concerned
with innovation as means of maintaining Pure-Pak’s position
which consequently suffered for a period. But this is
all ancient history – today, the Norwegian-based company
is an aggressive contender in a global market.
The Big Three
On a global level, today’s beverage carton sector is
dominated by three major players:
Tetra Pak: Originally Swedish. Now with
headquarters in Switzerland, in a league of its
own, the biggest player with a global market
share of around 70 percent and activities in
most markets.
Rank Group: New Zealand. Owns SIG
in Europe, Blue Ridge and International
Papers in the USA.
Elopak: Norway. Markets and
licenses the Pure-Pak system
worldwide. The third-largest
player and market leader
within fresh products.

8 •
ELOPAK – 50 ÅR OG KLAR FOR MER

The advent of the “paper bottle”
The hundred-year-long history of the beverage carton
reveals a great deal about the complicated nature of the
product and manufacturing equipment: more than 20 years
passed before someone managed to produce a
conveniently usable milk carton – and just as long again
from the invention of Pure-Pak until one of the USA’s
leading manufacturers of precision machines mastered
the Pure-Pak system.
Light, practical packaging – protects the fantastic properties
of the milk or juice, but is discarded after use...
This was the stuff of dreams in a world where the
woman in the milk shop bailed a litre or two into a specially
brought along for the purpose hopefully well-cleaned milk
bucket, or where the milk came in heavy glass bottles –
which, when empty, had to be thoroughly rinsed and
brushed with a bottle-brush before being sent back to the
shop, the milkman, the dairy. A dirty job, especially if you
left it until the milk dregs had dried in, not to mention if the
bottle had contained a fermented milk...
No, it is no coincidence that consumer demand has
been pivotal in many of the markets to which user-friendly,
disposable packaging has been introduced, more often than
not in the face of fierce opposition from authorities and
dairies who had invested heavily in other types of systems.
Bright ideas
The first known description of the sale of milk in paperbased
packaging originates from the USA. In a book from
1908, a Dr. Winslow in Seattle, Washington, describes a
disposable, paper-based milk container invented by G. W.
Maxwell in San Francisco. According to Winslow, the
carton was used in Los Angeles as early as 1906 – but
without success. It was purported to be rather impractical
and quickly and quietly disappeared.
In the years that followed, there were experiments with
waxed bags as well as metal cans but it was first and foremost
paper-based containers that aroused the most
interest. In the 1920’s, there were apparently ten manufacturers
offering carton-based packaging for milk in the
USA. But all ten supplied pre-folded and pre-glued cartons
that were ready for filling. This meant that all transportation
and storage would also have to entail the transportation
and storage of large amounts of air.
Then the toy manufacturer John Van Wormer in Toledo,
Ohio, had a better idea: as early as 1915, he had patented
a carton made of waxed paper that could be delivered to
the dairy in folded format, glued along the sides but not at
the ends. Now he was working on constructing the
machines that would be needed to form, fill and seal the
new carton, to which he had given the name Pure-Pak.
The idea was stunningly simple, but its implementation
turned out to be anything but straightforward. Van Wormer
took ten years to complete his first machine. It worked to
some extent but not well enough to achieve commercial
success, and the inventor realised that he would not be
able to complete the project on his own. In 1928, he sold
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 9
both the patenting rights and the brand name to the
American Paper Bottle Company, who would further
develop the technology. The company built six new
machines in the period between 1929 and 1934, but were
unable to make them work properly.
At the same time, several competitors were working
on producing “paper bottles”, and in 1929 the press
reported that two big dairies in New York had begun to use
Sealcone brand conical milk cartons. In other words, pressure
was building to get the Pure-Pak machines up and
running. Towards the end of 1934, the American Paper
Bottle Company therefore decided to ask Ex-Cell-O, one of
the USA’s most well-known manufacturers of precision
equipment, to take over the work.
Technically excellent, surrounded by enemies
Ex-Cell-O Corporation in Detroit was started by ex-Ford
employees in 1919, and was in 1934 best known as a
supplier of precision machinery for car manufacturing and
airplane parts. However, the company also supplied
precision machinery and parts to around thirty other
sectors – so one could easily use one’s machinery-related
skills to supply the dairies too…
A timeless concept: Today’s Pure-Pak is easily recognisable in
John Van Wormer’s patent application from 1915.

10 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
It would prove to be the most challenging assignment in
the company’s history. The problems began when the
American Paper Bottle company ran out of money after a
short time. Ex-Cell-O took over the rights to the brand
name, packaging and machines – only to discover that the
filling units that were already installed, and for which
Ex-Cell-O had taken over the guarantee liability, did not
work at all as expected and had to be replaced with new
equipment.
It was even worse to discover that the company had
moved into a sector where most of the players were hostile
to the newcomer. Among the opponents were, as one
might imagine, bottle manufacturers, transport companies
that transported heavy glass packaging back and forth,
suppliers of crates, bottle caps, filling equipment and bottle
washing machines. But also many of the dairies, who
should have formed the customer base, proved to be
extremely negative. They had invested large sums in
bottles and related manufacturing equipment and had little
desire to spend money on new and expensive Pure-Pak
machines. Moreover, many of them made a good living
free from any uncomfortable competition.
The new, light milk cartons could radically alter the
picture, and established interests with monopolies to
defend did not hesitate to mobilise marketing power,
political friends and archaic legislation. In certain places,
they managed to get the local health authorities to ban
“paper bottles”, on the basis of undocumented theories
regarding the carton’s adverse health effects.
The carton sector – with Ex-Cell-O as the key player –
fought a multitude of court battles during the years
between the wars, both in the 48 states that made up the
USA at that time, and within the federal legal system. An
example from Chicago is illustrative: one of the city’s
dairies wanted to offer its customers milk in Pure-Pak
cartons, but the city health board denied approval of the
new packaging and laid down a ban on sales, citing a
stipulation from 1888 that volumes of milk under one gallon
(3.8 litres) were only
allowed to be sold in a
“standard milk bottle”.
After six years of
court cases against the
health board and the
city’s major, conducted at
all levels of the American
legal system, it looked
like the dairy and Ex-
Cell-O were going to
suffer a defeat. The final
court ruling was that the
city authorities had a legal right to make glass bottles compulsory
if they so desired. But, while the trial was going on,
the ban had not been legally binding. Sales of milk in
paper-based packaging had been going ahead and had, in
the meantime, reached a level of half a million units per
day. It was blatantly obvious what consumers wanted. And
since local elections were drawing near, Chicago’s mayor
deemed it safest to make a u-turn: the challenging and
hard-fought court victory was discreetly set aside and the
words “standard milk bottle” were supplemented with “or
other approved container.” And so Pure-Pak won the battle.
Pure-Pak is perfected
In addition to efforts at the legal and political levels,
Ex-Cell-O also employed major resources in perfecting
both the filling machines and the conversion machines for
blanks. The blanks machines inherited from the American
Paper Bottle Company used piles of paperboard plates as
raw material in the same way as traditional printing houses.
Ex-Cell-O developed new and effective rotation machines
that inserted the raw material in the form of huge rolls
and could continuously produce blanks at high speed.
The cartons were also improved; amongst other things,
Ex-Cell-O funded wide-ranging research to develop a new
paper-based material that would make the packaging more
hygienic and leak-proof.
Another long-term and demanding development project
centred on how the cartons should be opened. The product
Ex-Cell-O took over in 1935 had no opening mechanism
whatsoever; the consumer was directed to attack the
carton with a knife or a pair of scissors. This was hardly
satisfactory so Ex-Cell-O developed a solution in the form
of a type of sealed ”tab” at the end of the carton’s gable –
without quite managing to get it to work as it should. It
actually took all of 18 years before the solution we all know
was reached: the top part of the gable on the Pure-Pak
could be bent back and folded out into a complete pouring
spout, that is then folded back to close the carton. A brilliant
solution, which, in terms of user-friendliness, is surpassed
only by the plastic screw top. The concept itself
was actually described in Van Wormer’s patent as early as
1915 – but for a long time, it was impossible to create a
gable that was both impermeable and easy to open,
without using glue that produced an aftertaste or
hazardous chemicals.
Competition: A range of “paper bottles” were launched in the
1930s; the picture at the top shows some of them. Pure-Pak
(left) was the clear winner.

A major, powerful player
In time, as the Pure-Pak system was further developed,
Ex-Cell-O achieved ever-increasing success in the market,
but the war years brought major supply problems. Not until
the war was over could the really significant growth take
place. A powerful, optimistic and technology-oriented USA
stood ready to embrace any progress that made everyday
life easier and better. Modern disposable packaging was of
course right in its sights – and Pure-Pak in particular proved
to appeal strongly to post-war, American housewives.
The market share grew slowly but surely at the
expense of both bottles and other beverage carton brands.
By the mid-1950s, Ex-Cell-O had become a giant within
disposable packaging. Nevertheless, it was the machines
that were the company’s heart and soul; it didn’t matter
whether they were used to build spaceships or fill milk
cartons. Also, at that time, Ex-Cell-O only manufactured
the machines themselves; from the very start, all blanks
production was licensed to the paper factories and
conversion specialists – in contrast to Elopak, for example,
who chose to be a full systems supplier, responsible for
both cartons and machines, and after a time, also for the
equipment for distribution to the retail outlet’s refrigerated
counter.
Pure-Pak in the world
During the initial post-war years, Ex-Cell-O had more than
enough demand in the domestic market. During the 1950s
however, the company slowly began to direct a little
attention towards foreign players who wanted to take part
in the progress. Moreover, the American military wanted
their forces overseas to have milk in cartons, just like they
were used to getting at home. Towards the end of 1956,
Ex-Cell-O had six licensees outside the USA: three in
Canada, one in Columbia – and two “overseas” in Belgium
and Denmark.
It was at this time that a Norwegian knocked on the
door of the headquarters in Detroit. His name was
Christian August Johansen. A cellulose engineer by
profession, his mission was to secure a license agreement
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 11
European tracks and sidetracks
It was in the USA in 1906
that the first serious
attempts to put the milk
carton on the market were
made and it was also here
that the beverage carton
enjoyed its breakthrough a
couple of decades later.
However, this does not
mean that there were no
European inventors working
on the case. A point to be
made here is that Swedish
Tetra Pak delivered its first
filling machine in 1952, and
with that started the sector’s biggest success story – but in
actual fact, one Gustav Türk from Kronstad patented a
paper-based beverage container as early as 1882. It was
impregnated with a combination of fine limestone powder,
aluminium-oxide and fresh blood serum – and was calmly
forgotten. In 1929, the machine factory Jagenberg in
Düsseldorf launched a gable top carton called “Perga Pack”
– which enjoyed some degree of success, but fell prey to
economic recession in the early 1930s. Production was
however resumed in 1958, and taken over by SIG in 1988.
The Satona Company in Leeds, England, also manufactured
a “paper bottle” patented by the Dane, Carl Hartmann in
1935, and the Norwegian engineer, Erling Stockhausen,
patented a similar but improved carton and associated filling
and sealing machine (picture). Stockhausen’s equipment
was used on a trial basis by Agder Dairy in Kristiansand from
1938 to 1940, reportedly with good results. The break-out of
the Second World War brought further work to a halt.
for Pure-Pak in Europe, and a filling machines agency. He
was of course thrown out.
But Christian August Johansen was not the type to give
up so easily. It is said that he sat himself down on the
steps and refused to move until the Ex-Cell-O management
heard him out.
In any case, it is a fact that he did eventually
come home with both the license and the agency.
And so begins the Elopak story – the subject of the
next chapter.
Vintage: Ex-Cell-O supplied Pure-Pak
filling machines to all types of dairies,
from the biggest to the smallest.

12 •
ELOPAK – 50 ÅR OG KLAR FOR MER
Easy to do it yourself .....

A vision becomes reality
No customers. No factory. No suppliers of raw materials.
A product to which few Norwegians related, and which
many regarded with scepticism. This was the state of
affairs on the 11th of February 1957, the day A/S Elopak
Limited was founded. No-one can accuse the founders of
lacking courage...
It all began when the Norwegian cellulose engineer,
Christian August Johansen, came home from the USA with
a daring vision: a European license agreement for the
American Pure-Pak carton and an agency for Pure-Pak filling
machines. He had paid Ex-Cell-O in Detroit a lumpsum
of 5000 dollars; moreover, the American company
were due a license fee of two percent of blanks sales. For
his part, Johansen got a commission of around ten percent
of machine sales.
However – alone, he did not have the capital to get
started. Johansen needed an investor and had already
been in contact with Den norske Creditbank and Orkla,
without success. In the spring of 1956, he was advised to
contact Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrikk in Oslo. Here he found
an interested audience in the factory owner Johan H.
Andresen senior.
‘Paper bottles’ … in Norway?
Both directly before the war and around 1950, many of the
Norwegian players were experimenting with carton packaging
for milk. For a brief period, Fellesmeieriet dairy plant in
Oslo supplied cream in cartons manufactured by a paper
company in Sarpsborg, which were similar in appearance
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 13
to Pure-Pak. And in 1953, the newspaper, Telemark
Arbeiderblad, reported that Fellesmeieriet had plans to
make the transition from glass to paper based packaging.
But the newspaper was too quick off the mark and
there was no shortage of reactions. ”...it is already apparent
that the packaging will push up the price of milk to
such an extent that normal sales will be out of the
question,” remarked the manager of Skiens Meieribolag.
He was supported by sober-minded men, who were enthusiastic
about expressing their opinions in public debate:
No, while disposable packaging was perhaps acceptable in
America, it would not be in Norway. It would cost too much,
and the minor inconvenience of washing and returning
empty bottles wasn’t even worth mentioning...
The factory-owner, Andresen, did not allow himself to
be discouraged by this type of scepticism. The family firm
needed new investment opportunities, and C. A.
Johansen’s project was more closely scrutinised. After
thorough calculations and analyses of the market
opportunities, Johansen and a Tiedemanns representative
travelled to Detroit. Here they met Ex-Cell-O Vice-President
George Scott to confirm the agreement and elaborate on
certain points.
Tiedemanns swung behind the project. On the 11th of
February 1957, A/S Elopak Limited was formally established.
The name, an abbreviation for European Licensee of
Pure-Pak, did not however arouse great enthusiasm at Ex-
A handshake in Detroit: In early 1957, Christian August
Johansen (on the left) and Ex-Cell-O’s George Scott agreed on
the final details of the license agreement.

14 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
Cell-O, who thought the Norwegians were going too far.
Elopak had manufacturing rights only in Scandinavia, although
it did have the sales rights for blanks in the whole of
Europe, but not exclusively; there were already licenseholders
in Denmark, Belgium and England.
Nevertheless, the new company kept the name
Elopak. Tiedemanns became the principal shareholder with
75 percent of the capital; C. A. Johansen got the remaining
25 percent as payment for concept, rights and contributions
before establishment. He also became the new
company’s first CEO, and an agreement was entered into
between Elopak and Johansen’s company regarding the
sale of Pure-Pak filling machines.
“It was quite a factory...”
At the time, Tiedemanns had an available balance of NOK
1.5 million. With this money behind them, the work of building
a large, new production plant was set in motion –
before Elopak was even formally established. The factory
was located at Spikkestad in Southern Norway. The site
was chosen because it was only a short distance from
Hurum Paper Factory which, according to the plan, would
be supplying the raw paperboard.
The new building was erected in record time or, as an
enthusiastic Drammens Tidende reported in their issue of
23rd of November 1957: “It’s incredible, but it was in January
this year that the groundwork began out at the Elopak
factory in Spikkestad. This was not a straight forward
housing project. It was quite a factory – worth over 1.5
million kroner. Today it is completely finished.” On the same
day, the newspaper Fremtiden stressed that “a tour around
the bright and beautiful factory grounds gives a good
indication of just how far modern technology has come.”
Both newspapers were impressed by the machines,
from which “...paper milk bottles are virtually shot out”. And
they had reason to be. Elopak had decided to go for an
advanced, high-capacity, rotary machine – ambitions were
riding high from the offset. The new company had
committed itself to becoming a major supplier of integrated
“packages” of machines and blanks – in contrast to many
other players, among them Ex-Cell-O itself. “The parent
Military inspection: The first Elopak cartons were to be used to
supply milk to the American forces in Europe. The US Navy sent
people to Spikkestad to ensure that everything went smoothly.
company” in Detroit sold only the machines and left all
blanks production to others on payment of a license fee.
Fighting for a customer
Now that Elopak had a factory the first personnel were
recruited. But – there were still no customers, and the
employees were carrying out odd jobs, such as painting
the walls.
As it turned out, the transition to paper-based materials
was extremely difficult for the Norwegian dairies. At the
time, they were in the middle of replacing long-necked and
heavy, clear-glass bottles with a new type of bottle that
was smaller, lighter and coloured brown, which provided a
degree of protection against light and therefore against the
unpleasant “sun-struck taste” that sometimes affected the
milk in the summertime. This was already a major investment
for the dairies. And then along comes Elopak, urging
them to commit to “paper bottles” that will require further
investment and will be more expensive! Thanks, but no
thanks…it’s just too inconvenient.
First-class equipment:
Right from the start, the
converter plant in
Spikkestad had effective
rotary machines with
paperboard on rolls.

It was the American forces, stationed in Germany
after the Second World War that came to the rescue. The
soldiers received their daily milk in practical cartons, just
like they were used to back home. The Dutch dairy company,
Sterovita, was responsible for supply, based on
blanks from the American-owned Dairy Pak. Elopak
decided to take up competition.
However, closer investigation showed that Dairy Pak
supplied blanks at way under the normal listed price, which
formed the basis of Elopak’s calculations. This was a quite
a let down. It called for a different way of thinking that was
rooted in economics of scale – that is, where large volumes
lead to low costs per unit. Moreover, the price of raw
materials that had been used as the basis for negotiations
with Hurum Paper Factory, simply had to come down.
But Hurum had little faith in Elopak and, not least, in
supplying liquid paperboard at the price the newly established
factory would pay. The working relationship was terminated
before it got off the ground, and Elopak chose to
use liquid paperboard from International Paper in the USA.
The offer was sent to Sterovita. And early in 1958, it
was clear that Elopak had won its first customer – a contract
for the monthly supply of between 40 and 50 million
blanks over the course of one year.
Another part of the story is that Dairy Pak was
unhappy they had lost. The company’s Director and Sales
Director made a personal appearance at Elopak’s Headquarters
in Oslo, and threatened to drive the Norwegians
into bankruptcy. It would later transpire that they had
issued the same threat to Jyllands Papirværk (Schouw),
who held the Pure-Pak license for Denmark, but without
putting them into action. So Elopak chose to ignore the
threat, and heard nothing more about it.
Asker Dairy leads the charge
In the meantime, the work to win customers from among
the Norwegian dairies continued. It so happened that Asker
Dairy planned to extend their capacity significantly, but had
a serious space problem. Elopak demonstrated to the dairy
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 15
Success: Asker Dairy was the first in
Norway to go with Pure-Pak. Many
customers gladly travelled the twenty
miles from Oslo to get hold of milk in
the new packaging.
management, headed by manager Lars Gjul, how this
could be resolved by making the transition to cartons from
glass for certain stages of production. Both the manufacturing
equipment and the packaging occupied significantly
less space, and the dairy would be able to extend
capacity without having to put up new buildings.
That clinched the deal: on the 5th of February1958,
Asker Dairy became the very first in Norway to fill Pure-Pak
cartons with milk, and the first to make milk in cartons
ordinarily accessible to Norwegian consumers.
The event attracted wide press coverage as well as,
according to the newspaper Nationen, several invited celebrities.
Housewives stood in a queue outside, bursting with
anticipation, to secure their share of the new miracle – and
soon enough, many of them began to make the twenty
mile trip from Oslo to Asker to buy milk.
Furthermore, Elopak and Asker Dairy combined forces
to make a smart marketing move: for the first month, the
old bottles were not used. All products were filled in
cartons which were, however, sold at the same price as
bottled milk. Consequently, whether they wanted to or not,
consumers became accustomed to the new packaging.
Then, when the bottles returned, the housewives could –
based on their own experiences – decide whether or not
they wanted to pay the six øre the pricing authorities
would accept as the additional price for cartons – and
thus only carry home 1.08 kilos per litre of milk, instead
of the heavier glass bottles; which in addition had to
be washed out and carried back to the shop.
There was no shortage of customers who
thought that this was good value for money. And
the numbers grew steadily until Asker Dairy was
able to wind-up bottle-filling for good in 1967.
The verdict of the consumers was clear
and the success in Asker made a definite
impression. Ten years after the
establishment of Elopak, 39
Norwegian dairies were filling
Pure-Pak cartons with milk.

16 •
ELOPAK – 50 ÅR OG KLAR FOR MER
The earlier the better …..

A global company takes shape
Firmly established in Spikkestad, Elopak began to work
intensively to add more Norwegian dairies to their customer
list. After ten years, the number stood at 39; among them,
some of the biggest dairies in the country. Now it was time
to make the company’s international ambitions a reality.
It would take an entire book to provide a reasonably systematic
presentation of Elopak’s multifaceted development
over the last fifty years – from when the first blanks left
Spikkestad to today’s multinational company. We will have
to content ourselves, over the following pages, with a range
of themes and episodes; some important, others more of a
characterisation. Several others could – and maybe should
– have been chosen, but hopefully, this chapter will nevertheless
provide some impression of Elopak’s journey to
becoming a global company.
Norwegian growth
After Elopak’s successful debut in Asker, the market
began to loosen up. More and more dairies realised that
they had to provide customers with an alternative to the
bothersome bottle. However, the dairies showed little willingness
to pay, and Elopak had to operate within narrow
price-margins and with low profitability. The organisation
was small and did not have the money to employ more
personnel – so the first years demanded a great deal of
pioneering spirit and dedication from its employees, and
patient far-sightedness from its owner.
Daily life was not made easier by the fact that
Ex-Cell-O was mostly concerned with selling machines in
a burgeoning domestic market. License-holders in Europe
played second fiddle and technical support was so-so.
However, C. A. Johansen had recruited diligent service
engineers, and they managed to deal with most situations
on their own. Many of them were ex-naval engineers,
used to improvising and able to give their all when it really
mattered.
Practical in the refrigerated display
cabinet:
The light, disposable cartons
contributed to grocery shops in most
places taking over the sale of milk.
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 17
But, against all odds, Elopak managed to maintain a
level of service with which clients were satisfied, and over
ten years, 39 Norwegian dairies installed Pure-Pak
machines. Contracts were won despite tough competition
from alternative and cheaper solutions. A few dairies opted
for milk in plastic bags, but the main competitor was
Swedish Tetra Pak, with its tetrahedron shaped packaging
that gave the company its name. Today, it is sold under the
name “Tetra Classic”; during this period it was usually
called “the triangle”.
Both the packaging and the filling machine cost less
than the equivalent Pure-Pak, and the small dairies,
especially those in sparsely populated areas – where production
volumes were small and transport of milk bottles
disproportionately expensive – quickly adopted “the triangle”.
Elopak had, for its part, particular success in the
bigger cities: it was unquestionably a major victory when,
in 1960, the big Fellesmeieriet dairy plant in Oslo chose
the Pure-Pak system.
The key to Elopak’s success in the Norwegian market
was Pure-Pak’s superior user-friendliness. Both “the
triangle” and the milk bags were thoroughly unpopular
with consumers. They were difficult to open and to pour
from, and campaigns were launched in several places to
replace them with the gable top carton.
The bags quickly disappeared. “The triangle” also
went on the defensive, and Tetra Pak realised that they
needed to offer an alternative. Then, in 1964, the brickshaped
Tetra Brik was launched – by locals it was immediately
christened “the square”. But “the square” lacked
the gable top carton’s stability, and many years would go
by before it was given an opening mechanism which
made the use of tools unnecessary. Norwegian consumers
still preferred the gable top carton, and in the end,
Tetra Pak therefore had to resort to the Pure-Pak
imitation Tetra Rex, launched in Norway in 1967.
Today the gable top carton is the dominant packaging
form for milk and fresh juice in Norway, and Elopak

18 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
has maintained a clear, leading market position, in this
anniversary year of 2007, with a market share of around
60 percent.
Out in the world – the hunt for paperboard
Elopak first established itself internationally in Finland –
due to the necessity of having to find a secure and competitive
supplier of raw materials. Initially, American paperboard
was used, but this was not a permanent solution. C.
A. Johansen had contacts within Finland’s biggest forestry
group Enso-Gutzeit Oy, originally a Norwegian company
founded by the Wilhelm Gutzeit from Drammen, which had
since relocated to Finland. When Johansen contacted the
company, they were right in the middle of constructing a
new plant in Kaukopä, which could be developed to meet
the Pure-Pak carton’s specifications.
Parallel to this, Elopak saw great potential for cartoned
milk in Finland, where, due to the destruction wrought by
the Second World War and the Civil War, milk was mainly
still sold in buckets. In 1959, Elopak and Enso-Gutzeit, with
a 50 percent share each, created the company Elopak Oy.
The company would sell machines to and provide a service
for Finnish dairies, while Enso-Gutzeit would supply the
domestic market with blanks, upon payment of a license
fee to Elopak – and not least, supply the factory in
Spikkestad with paperboard.
In 1998, Enso-Gutzeit merged with Swedish Store
Kopparsberg to form Stora Enso, which continues to be
one of Elopak’s most important suppliers of raw materials
along with Swedish Assi Domän Cartonboard and
American International Paper.
The great swedish milk war
Elopak’s next international venture was in Sweden. What
happened here says a lot about consumer power and
Four CEOs in fifty years
powerlessness, and not least about the fierce struggle for
the markets between Elopak and Tetra Pak.
The Swedish co-operative dairy giant, Mjölkcentralen
(now Arla), as interested in disposable packaging for milk as
far back as the end of the 1940s. They had contacted
Ex-Cell-O, who responded that they did not have the
capacity to cater to civilian markets outside the USA.
Mjölkcentralen therefore allied itself with Tetra Pak, who
needed a partner to finance the work of developing the
original tetrahedron shaped packaging, “the triangle”. The
Swedish Dairies’ Association also contributed to the development
work and later to the launch of the new packaging.
The alliance would prove to play a major role in the
competitive situation in Sweden. Elopak came to realise
this after establishing its Swedish subsidiary in 1961, when
it experienced Mjölkcentralen’s active efforts to prevent
member dairies from choosing Pure-Pak. At first, just one
dairy in Dalarne dared to break rank, the result of pressure
from consumers who did not want their milk bottles to be
replaced by “the triangle”.
But the situation in Malmö was exceptional. Here, at
the beginning of the sixties, there was real competition
between three dairies, and a great deal of interest was
aroused when the privately-owned Påhlssons Mejeri AB
chose to invest in a Pure-Pak machine – and in one year,
doubled its market share from 20 to 40 percent. Milk in
Pure-Pak cartons was so popular that shops used them as
loss-leaders, and when Påhlsson eventually began to
“export” to Stockholm, the dairy had to buy in several Pure-
Pak machines to cover demand. What’s more, the success
in Malmö spread to the local dairy in Lund, Tetra Pak’s
hometown. It is said that the head-quarters canteen had to
serve milk in Pure-Pak cartons.
Nevertheless, things got even worse when a market
survey revealed that 80 percent of consumers preferred
Throughout its 50 year history, all Elopak’s CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) have held the top job for long periods. The
picture on the far left shows the portrait of Christian August Johansen who started and led the company from it was
established in 1957 until 1967 – unveiled in the presence of (from the left) Arne Sunde (CEO from 1968 until 1979), owner
Johan H. Andresen senior, his wife Marianne Andresen and Johansen himself. Today, the painting hangs in the company’s
offices in Spikkestad. In the following pictures we see Eiulf Storm (CEO 1980-1996) and Bjørn Flatgård (1996-2007).

Pure-Pak, and were more than willing to pay a slightly
higher price for it. More and more dairies chose to go over
to the American-Norwegian carton, which from 1966 was
manufactured at a dedicated plant in Sweden. At its peak,
Pure-Pak’s market share was right up at 42 percent.
As more and more dairies chose Pure-Pak, the
Swedish Dairies’ Association decided they had to take
action. The nasty competitor had to be stopped, and the
organisation put pressure on member dairies to get them
to replace Pure-Pak with Tetra Pak. But – consumers were
having none of it! And with that, “the Swedish Milk War”
broke out, a war that raged on many fronts: as petition
campaigns, in local councils, as boycott demonstrations in
support of Pure-Pak. The war enjoyed a great deal of coverage
on radio and TV, (where Tetra Pak’s Hans Rausing
spilled milk all over the table during a demonstration of “the
triangle’s” pouring properties); it took on a legal dimension
when Elopak took the competition authorities to court; at
one stage, a smear campaign was launched involving
claims that Pure-Pak’s wax-layer could be carcinogenic.
The dairies divided into two camps, which after a while
were hardly on speaking terms with one another. The dispute
in Västerbotten was especially intense – it raged on,
fuelled by large-scale public participation, over the entire
period between 1977 and 1987 – with a level of heat that
has become the subject of sociological studies.
Part of the story is that consumer power didn’t cut it.
Monopolies don’t have to take the wishes of consumers
into account – but despite this, in 2007, Elopak still holds a
30 percent market share in Sweden.
European expansion
Towards the end of the 1960s, Elopak began to expand
beyond the Nordic region. The company held the license
for Europe, but no exclusive rights. There were local license-holders
in Denmark, Belgium, Italy, France and the
United Kingdom. But, aside from in Denmark, and to a
certain degree, the United Kingdom, they had not achieved
a great deal.
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 19
Fresh – or aseptic
There are two main types of beverage carton, for fresh and
aseptic products respectively. For fresh products the carton
and the contents are normally not sterilised. This protects the
fresh product’s taste and nutritional content. However, it has a
shorter shelf-life, and the packaged product must be
distributed in an unbroken refrigerated chain.
Aseptic filling of milk takes place under sterile conditions and
after ultra-pasteurisation, (UHT – Ultra High Temperature),
which involves heating the content to around 140 degrees for
a couple of seconds. Cartons for fresh products must be
impervious to liquid; aseptic cartons must also be impervious
to oxygen and other gases.
Elopak began cautiously with a small office in
Germany, mostly in order to get a feel for the market. The
first subsidiary outside the Nordic region was, however,
established in France in 1967, the reason for this being
that a couple of major contracts had been won there – as
well as an order for three “Green Devil” aseptic filling
machines (see fact box), the first three that Ex-Cell-O
supplied in Europe.
The name would turn out to be an omen: bacteria
flourished in the presumably aseptic packaging, and
Elopak’s technicians failed to make the machines work. In
actual fact, it is only in recent years that Elopak has
become an aseptic supplier of any real size: it is fresh product
packaging that has been the company’s main strength
throughout most of their history.
But the packaging of fresh milk requires high-quality
raw materials, something which in turn demands that both
the dairies and all distribution systems, from the farmer to
the consumer, meet very strict requirements. This is not a
problem if there is a tradition of adults drinking milk, like in
North America, the Nordic region and a few other

20 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
Growth – around the world
1957 Norway
1959 Finland
1961 Sweden
1967 France
1968 The Netherlands
1968 Germany
1969 Italy
1974 Switzerland
1981 Spain
1982 Great Britain
1983 Bahrain
1983 The Netherlands, Elocoat
1984 Switzerland, Elopak Systems
1987 Ireland
1987 USA
1988 Portugal
1988 Denmark
1991 Austria
1991 Czech Republic
1992 Switzerland, Elopak Trading
1992 Poland
1992 Russia
1992 Malaysia
1995 France, Norester
1996 Ukraine
1997 Italy, Unifill
1997 Saudi-Arabia, Joint Venture
1998 Mexico, Joint Venture
1998 Israel
1999 USA, Scott Group
1999 Finland, Elofin
1999 Israel, Elocap
1999 South Africa, Joint Venture
2000 Canada
2000 Switzerland, Plastic Systems
2000 Germany, Elofill
2000 China
2001 Sweden, EDC
2003 Great Britain, Plastic
2003 Greece, Joint Venture
2004 China, Souzhou
2005 Serbia
2006 Hungary
2006 Luxembourg
2006 Croatia
countries. But in many parts of Europe and the world,
packaged fresh milk is relatively rare, a premium product,
with smaller volumes than of aseptically packaged milk.
The Dutch are however a milk-drinking people. Moreover,
Elopak had excellent contacts in the country; the
dairy company, Sterovita, had of course been Elopak’s
very first customer. From an early stage therefore, the
Netherlands became an area of commitment and has also
acted as a bridgehead for further expansion into Europe.
The first converter plant for blanks outside the Nordic
region was constructed in the Dutch town of Terneuzen –
which today also houses the factory that laminates
Elopak’s barrier materials onto the raw paperboard. Elopak
has maintained a solid position in the Dutch market for
some time, a position that was further strengthened both
locally, and in a range of other European countries when,
in 2003, Elopak took over beverage carton operations of
the Dutch packaging group Variopak.
Ex-Cell-O’s decline
But while Elopak expanded in Europe, things got worse for
“mother” Ex-Cell-O in the USA. When Elopak got its Pure-
Pak license in 1957, the Ex-Cell-O Corporation was a giant
in the American market for milk packaging. Between 50
and 60 percent of all the milk in the USA was sold in
cartons, and of those cartons, between 60 and 70 percent
were Pure-Pak cartons.
But Ex-Cell-O’s primary business was machine
construction. The company made manufacturing equipment
and precision parts for a wide range of industries, and the
Pure-Pak machines came into being in the same way as
the machine factory’s other products – for the most part,
using the same production lines. A lot suggests that
Ex-Cell-O never saw itself as a part of the packaging
industry; they thought in terms of “machines” not in terms
of “packaging”, and had no discernible strategies for holding
onto their fantastic position in the American milk market.
After a while, patents began to expire resulting in
declining license income and new competitors. Nevertheless,
Ex-Cell-O did not commit to developing into a fullsystem
supplier in order to secure new income streams, as
both Elopak and Tetra Pak had done; neither did they form
alliances with the big paper factories that manufactured
blanks. A lack of proximity to the customer probably contributed
to the fact that they did not manage to carry out
product development, which would perhaps have secured
the loyalty of the dairies.
All these factors contributed to leaving the American
market wide open to a new and aggressive competitor –
the plastic bottle. It began to assert itself in the USA’s milk
market at the beginning of the seventies. At the time, Pure-
Pak still held over 70 percent of the carton market. By
1979, plastic had taken over 45 percent of the total market,
and this share rose rapidly into the eighties. Pure-Pak was
in the process of turning into a marginalised phenomenon.
Elopak takes over
At the beginning of the 1980s, Elopak was expanding
internationally – and thoroughly frustrated by the fact that
Ex-Cell-O had not managed to develop the new types of
machines that clients were demanding. We have already
mentioned that Ex-Cell-O had experimented with aseptic
machines, but without success. Elopak chose therefore to
instigate a joint venture with Liquipak in St. Paul,
Minnesota. The goal was to develop an aseptic machine
for Pure-Pak cartons – the project appeared extremely
promising. In 1986, the first machine was ready to be
publically presented at a trade fair in Paris, and was
strategically placed in the exhibition hall the day before
the opening of the trade fair.
Then the bombshell was dropped: arch-rival Tetra Pak
had bought out Liquipak – probably for the sole purpose of
keeping Elopak out of the aseptic market. There the
Swedish company held a near total monopoly, something
they much preferred to hold onto.
The Liquipak buy-out sent shockwaves through

Elopak’s management. What if Tetra Pak buys the rights to
Pure-Pak too? Ex-Cell-O was obviously weary of the
carton adventure and had intimated that they were thinking
about selling up.
Elopak could not sit passively and watch something like
this happen. Management was convinced that there had to
be a way to exploit Pure-Pak’s international potential better
than Ex-Cell-O had managed to do. In 1987, with the support
of owner, Johan H. Andresen senior, Elopak stepped
in and bought out Ex-Cell-O’s entire packaging division,
including all rights to the Pure-Pak system worldwide. Here
began Elopak’s journey to becoming a global player.
And Ex-Cell-O? They still exist and make machine tools
and automated manufacturing equipment for industry – just
like they started doing in 1919. Today, the company is a
part of German-American MAG Powertrain, itself a part of
MAG Industrial Automation Systems.
The American renaissance
Ten years passed from Elopak’s take-over of all the rights to
Pure-Pak until any serious attempt was made to win a position
in the homeland of the carton. The region Elopak
Americas – with head-quarters in New Hudson, Michigan –
has overall responsibility for all operations on the American
continent and in the Caribbean. Here is also the factory that
makes Pure-Pak filling machines, co-located with some research
and development staff. The manufacturing of blanks
takes place at plants in Montreal, Canada and Torreón,
Mexico. The Mexican plant is one of Elopak’s biggest.
Both the Mexican and the Canadian plants export significantly.
Mexico supplies several South-American countries and
the southern states of the USA, while Canada is strategically
placed to supply Chicago, New York, Washington and the
rest of eastern America south to Virginia. Additionally, several
Caribbean countries are important export markets.
Many Americans prefer plastic packaging for milk,
which is now used for 80 percent of milk. The remaining
20 percent nevertheless comprises large volumes, and
therefore represents significant potential for Pure-Pak
cartons. Elopak’s American personnel have moreover
shown creativity and willingness to blaze new paths with
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 21
unconventional products in relation to the gable top carton
– such as sugar, syrup, bathing salts, plant fertiliser,
chewing gum... and cartoned “liquid eggs” have been a big
success with people who want to avoid breaking eggs to
make an omelette.
A global player
When the first converter factory was built in Spikkestad, it
was envisaged that in time, the plant could be extended to
cover the whole of Europe’s demand for blanks. However,
the dairy sector would turn out to be concerned with
security of supply and would want blanks production to
take place as close to the dairy as possible. Therefore,
converter plants were constructed in several countries –
until European integration, relaxation of tension between
East and West, and not least safe, inexpensive transport
options rendered the issue less pertinent. In the last few
years, the tendency has been towards fewer and larger
plants for production of blanks. Among those who have
disappeared is the very first plant in Spikkestad.
Despite Elopak’s international development, staff levels
at the head-quarters in Norway have always been low. The
dairy sector is characteristically local, and marked by
tradition, politics and culture. For this reason, Elopak has
chosen to opt for personnel “native” to the markets in which
they have operated. Proximity to the customer has been
the motto, so headquarters will just have to live with a few
communication challenges.
Elopak has chosen to expand some markets through
joint ventures with local players – today, Saudi-Arabian
Elopak Obeikan, Envases Elopak in Mexico and Elopak
South Africa are successful examples of this. In other
markets such as Japan, Korea and Australia, Elopak has
built a foundation of license agreements with local partners.
Regardless of the form the work takes, there is one
condition for Elopak’s continued growth within a sector
dominated by much bigger players: one must have added
value to offer, and this must be based on attentiveness to
the consumer’s needs and desires. This is why Elopak’s
Research and Development holds the key to the future.
More about this in the next chapter.
Effective machines:
A modern production line for
blanks is a large machine. This
one is from Elopak’s plant in
Speyer, Germany.

22 •
ELOPAK – 50 ÅR OG KLAR FOR MER
Prescription for hygiene.

Research for the breakfast table
The ability to create new products is the key to the future
for Elopak. This is why the company has one of
Norwegian industry’s really intensive research and
development departments, employing almost ninety
people. And the range of skills spans far and wide:
materials technology, food technology, microbiology,
chemistry, physics, sensorics, industry design, logistics...
Elopak’s strategic decision to focus on the premium
segment for beverage packaging posed a challenge for
the company’s research and development resources.
Packaging that should stand out on the shelves and
provide added value for the product, must itself be of
premium quality, in terms of both functionality and design.
The R&D department quickly took up the challenge and
over recent years the pace of Elopak’s innovation has
attracted attention, both from customers and other
players in the sector.
The Technology Centre with its own dairy
The foundation for the innovation of recent years was
laid in 2000, with the opening of the Elopak Technology
Centre in Spikkestad. Here is where the bulk of the
company’s R&D resources are concentrated, with wellequipped
laboratories for microbiology, chemistry, materials
technology and analysis, quality control and sensorics
– i.e. taste-testing. Moreover, the centre deals with
market research and industrial design, and coordinates
activities with the department in Detroit, other research
institutes and specialist laboratories with which Elopak
collaborates.
Elopak’s Technology Centre distinguishes itself in that
it houses an entire dairy – with equipment that receives
milk straight from the cow – and large enough to serve
the whole of the city of Drammen and half the county of
Buskerud. The plant has government approval to process
all food types. From time to time, it undertakes assignments
for clients in emergency situations; however it is
normally only used for testing packaging, machine parts,
shelf-life and limited manufacturing for market testing.
The Technology Centre also has a complete production
line for testing blanks, and enough space to test
twelve entire filling machines simultaneously. In the
course of a year, between 20 and 30 machines come
through the big hall in Spikkestad, some of which are
built at Elopak’s own production unit in New Hudson in
Michigan, USA; others by Elopak’s partner of many
years, Shikoku Kakoki Co., Ltd. in Japan.
Flexible and effective
Elopak’s commitment to innovation has resulted in
steadily increasing numbers of personnel within the R&D
division. All are highly skilled in their fields, many holding
PhDs.
But even with one of Norwegian industry’s larger R&D
departments, Elopak is a small player by international
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 23
standards. In terms of resources, this is naturally a disadvantage.
On the other hand, it provides a flexibility that
the really big competitors cannot match, with skilled and
highly motivated personnel, who are ready and willing to
give their all. And the department is well organised to
make maximum use of its resources. There are several
successful examples of products Elopak has developed
in the space of six months, while the big, heavyweight
players in the sector can easily spend three years on
equivalent projects.
Some of the explanation for the fast pace of
innovation is also provided by the fact that Elopak enjoys
excellent technical collaborative relationships with both
clients, suppliers and research institutes such as NTNU in
Trondheim, the Norwegian University of Life Sciences in
Ås, as well as a range of international counterparts.
20 years of independent research
The history of the R&D department at Elopak covers the
last 20 of the 50 years the company has been in
existence. True enough, in the second half of the sixties,
Elopak was responsible for the development of new distribution
equipment in the form of roll containers – so
successful they are still in use today. But as long as
Elopak was a licensee of Ex-Cell-O, it was principally the

24 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
American company that was responsible for development
work. In Detroit, at that time, there were several fullystaffed
units which dealt with both machine and carton
technology.
Even though it was mechanics that attracted the most
attention at Ex-Cell-O, they suffered a run of bad luck
with their aseptic machines – perhaps because the
domestic market was geared so exclusively towards fresh
milk. For Elopak, this led to extremely unpleasant experiences
in France and Germany towards the end of the
seventies. After concerted efforts, they had managed
to sell three of the new “Green Devil” machines from
Ex-Cell-O, the first in Europe. And then the filled products
turned out to be anything but bacteria-free…
The blunder resulted in Elopak embarking on a collaborative
relationship with Liquipak in St. Paul, Minnesota,
in order to produce a new, improved aseptic machine – a
collaborative relationship which Ex-Cell-O somewhat
reluctantly accepted. The reason the project was never
completed is another story, which is told in the previous
chapter. The previous chapter also describes how this
became a major contributing factor to Elopak’s decision,
in1987, to take over all the rights to the Pure-Pak system
worldwide.
This take-over would have significant repercussions
on the research side of things: now Elopak held sole
responsibility for all further development, so they needed
to build up their own R&D division. In terms of machines,
Filling technology:
Top left the “mandrel
section” which shapes the
blanks into cartons; on the
right the “cap-applicator”
for cartons with screw
caps – and at the bottom,
a large, modern Pure-Pak
filling machine,
photographed at Elopak’s
test centre in Spikkestad.

Elopak had a good starting point in the form of the
sections of Ex-Cell-O’s development division in Detroit,
which had been included in the buy-out. Management
decided to build up a new unit – initially in Lier and later
in Spikkestad – for the remaining research areas.
New aseptic challenges
It would turn out to be far from easy to get to grips with
aseptic development, even when the work was run
in-house. Design of the company’s first own aseptic filler
was started in the late 80s with Elopak’s Japanese
partner Shikoku Kakoki, but wasn’t launched until 1992.
Despite the skill of the Japanese, it proved to lack the
robustness required for milk.
On the other hand, the new construction proved
extremely suitable for juice. Some of the complexity
inherent to development work is illustrated by what is
known in the profession as “the pineapple problem”: the
machine was tested using orange juice and found to work
well. Then a client came along who wanted to package a
closely related product – pineapple juice. But – a minor
difference in the surface membrane resulted in the
formation of additional foam during the filling process.
Small quantities of foam could splash on to the sealing
area, making it impossible to seal the carton gas-tight
The pineapple problem is one of the problems the
development department resolved long ago. Today,
Elopak is totally committed to its aseptic machines for the
juice market, safe in the knowledge that the products
deliver what they promise. In addition, the market share
for aseptic juice has developed nicely over the last few
years.
New millennium, changing times
The powerful process of re-organisation in relation to the
establishment of the Elopak Technology Centre in 2000
heralded changing times for the product development
process at Elopak. It’s true to say that, hitherto, it had
been both unstructured and overly optimistic, and just as
much driven by technical pride as by any potential
usefulness to customers and consumers.
This is simply not permissible in today’s tough competitive
climate. Therefore, all projects are now evaluated
by a group put together from different parts of the organisation;
such that technical, financial, production and
market based considerations are taken into account. With
limited resources in comparison with their competitors, it’s
essential to ensure that the ideas with the greatest potential
are the ones that are further developed – with
regular, ongoing evaluation to ensure that the project
continues to have the right to life.
Experience tells us that out of fifty apparently good
ideas, there are only 2 or 3 that stand any chance of
success on the shop shelves. And it is Elopak’s ability to
cherry-pick precisely these ideas that has given the
company its position as the sector’s most innovative
player.
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 25
A window on the world
One of the advantages of
the plastic bottle has been
that you can see its
contents. This can make the
product more appealing, as
well as make it easy to see
how much is left. Now this
is possible with the
beverage carton too: one of
the innovations to come
from Elopak’s laboratories is
the Pure-Pak windowed
carton. The window can be
made large or small, usually
with a creative and eyecatching
design that
provides a good impression
of the contents.
Transparency is also one
of the disadvantages of plastic bottles, in that light can
affect and reduce the shelf-life of the contents. This
unfortunate side-effect is avoided with a carton whose
window is made relatively small – for example, shaped like
an “hour-glass” – and which indicates exactly how much is
left in the carton.
Windowed cartons are being tested in individual
markets and will be fully launched during 2008.
Tall, lean, stylish
“Slim” is the name of the most recent version of Pure-Pak
– an elegant designer model intended for products that
deserve environmentally-friendly packaging
with a modern and exclusive edge.
The tall, slim shape is eye-catching,
and the exclusive look
strengthened by the
distinguishing Curve down the
side and the Diamond arched
top with its large screw cap. As
well as this, the ”gable top” has
also been given a special
shape, unique to this carton.
Slim is launched in
connection with Elopak’s
fifty-year anniversary –
a forward-looking
innovation that will
safeguard Elopak’s
leading position in
the premium
market for
decades to
come.

26 •
ELOPAK – 50 ÅR OG KLAR FOR MER
Two tough guys

A focus on environmental responsibility
Many people regard packaging as an environmental problem.
But packaging that protects food against spoiling is, in
reality, quite the opposite. Especially if the packaging – like
the beverage carton – has a minimal influence on the greenhouse
effect and is made from sustainable resources.
There has been little talk of beverage packaging in
today’s global warming debate, despite the fact that it is
one of the world’s most widespread product groups. Up
to a billion units are sold on a daily basis, and the figure
is rising, keeping pace with the market for portion packs
and an ever-larger proportion of the global population
deriving the benefits of economic development.
Therefore, ensuring that as much of the beverage
market as possible is packed in cartons becomes a significant
environmental issue. The alternative is first and
foremost plastic bottles. These are made with oil as a raw
material, introducing CO2 into the environment. This is in
contrast to the carton: it is based on wood pulp, which
becomes part of the natural CO2 cycle.
Environmental awareness
With the increasing environmental awareness of consumers,
environmental friendliness is now becoming very
important for competition. Grocers and supermarkets
experience consumer reactions more directly than the
dairies and juice producers. Both consumers and retail
trade are therefore vital target groups for information
about the beverage carton’s “green” qualities.
Green values: Beverage cartons from Elopak are carbon
efficient, having only a minimal effect on global warming. Raw
materials come from evergreen forests that are replanted.
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 27
The packaging industry has at times been a target for
environmental activists and politicians, and criticism has
sometimes been levelled at the beverage carton. However,
that was in the past. Today, the environmental movement
is a strong ally. This is due to four significant
factors: the beverage carton is made from sustainable
resources; the materials can be recycled or used for
energy production without adding to total CO2 emissions;
the carton is light and therefore not very energy-intensive
to transport – and last but not least, it protects vulnerable
foods that it takes a lot of energy to produce.
Criticism in the past has partly resulted from ignorance
of the beverage carton’s actual properties, so that it has
been attacked together with other types of disposable
packaging – which perhaps are more deserving of such
criticism.
On the other hand, it should be admitted that the
activists had a point when they protested against disposable
packaging adding to refuse quantities. Both
Elopak and other carton producers have addressed this
by, amongst other things, co-operating to establish
recycling schemes, so that used beverage cartons are
used to make new products.
Common interests
The beverage carton was also in the firing line when new,
improved methods of measurement, towards the end of
the 1980s, made it possible to establish the existence of
minute amounts of dioxin in cellulose, which is the raw
material for cardboard and paper. The carcinogenic
chemical came from the paper factories use of chlorine
gas for bleaching, and for the removal of the chemicals in
wood pulp that could produce an undesirable taste.
The amount of dioxin was so small that there was
uncertainty as to whether it actually posed a risk to
health. But in June 1989 the issue prompted Elopak,
Tetra Pak and SIG Combibloc, along with raw carton
manufacturers in Europe and the USA, to come together
for the first time. There was a realisation that the dioxin
problem had to be tackled. One result of the co-operation
was that after a year, a new production process was
developed that did not involve the use of chlorine gas; the
sector was taking no chances either with its own
reputation or the health of consumers.
This new co-operation also led to the creation of the
organisation called the Alliance for Beverage Cartons
and the Environment (ACE), which plays a key role in
describing the factual basis that documents the
environmental properties of the beverage carton in
relation to other types of packaging. ACE also
provides an information service for politicians,
environmental organisations and the general
public, and contributes to the beverage carton
being taken into consideration in working
with EU laws and directives. Elopak has
always been a key and active
participant in both ACE and the
sector’s other organisations.

The way ahead
Elopak goes into its next fifty years with a clear strategy
of focusing on packaging premium products. Future
development will be two-dimensional: geographic growth
and a stronger organisational alignment and
co-ordination.
The first fifty years of Elopak’s history have been marked
by ups as well as downs. Now the company enters its
next fifty years in the continuation of a period of solid
growth, in an atmosphere of confidence, knowing what
the company will become, and how it will develop. Elopak
has made a strategic decision to concentrate activities
where it already leads the way – packaging for premium
products. That is, fresh products, aseptic products that
make extraordinary demands on quality, and highly
profiled, specialised products where packaging is vital
to a overall impression and the ability to attract the
consumer’s attention.
A well thought-out choice
The choice is most definitely a consequence of the
tendency for the market to split in two – one segment
where low price is decisive, and one premium segment,
where price is less important than quality. At the same
time the mid-range segment loses significance.
With such a dominant player as Tetra Pak as a competitor,
there is little point in competing on price in the
market for standard aseptic products. Neither has it been
possible in the plastic bottle segment, where Elopak built
up a modest business over 10 years, to provide something
that others couldn’t do better. Activities in this area
were therefore recently wound-up; in addition, plastic
bottles are environmentally unsustainable – in contrast
with the beverage carton, which will gain new market
shares in pace with increasing awareness of consumers
that greenhouse gas emissions have to be reduced.
Successful innovation
In line with this strategy Elopak has launched a series of
design-protected cartons over the last few years that contribute
to differentiating the products they contain. This is
packaging that contributes to positioning quality products,
with designs that make them stand out, combined with
properties that further strengthen Pure-Pak’s usual userfriendliness.
The pace of innovation has attracted
attention and the innovations themselves are well received
by both beverage product manufacturers and consumers
from different corners of the earth. Moreover, it is a real
feather in the cap for Elopak’s product developers that the
new packaging is regarded as major news in terms of the
market, but nonetheless does not demand major investments
from either the customers or Elopak itself.
Principal areas of expansion
In addition to concentration on the premium segment and
a strengthened commitment to innovation, there are two
other dimensions to Elopak’s plans for further develop-
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE • 29
Leading Elopak into the future: Niels Petter Wright took over
as Chief Executive Officer of Elopak in May of this anniversary
year.
ment. One is geographic expansion; the other is a
strengthening of the Elopak organisation in order to
create a more integrated company.
Geographically, Eastern Europe, Russia and the
American continent will form the primary areas of focus.
These are areas that Elopak is already familiar with, and
where growing markets are opening up with real purchasing
power. There is a greater chance of successful
expansion in these areas, where the company is already
established, than in those parts of the world where one
has to start from scratch.
Eastern Asia, not least China, are of course areas of
extreme interest. Elopak already has local licensees
working with the markets in Japan and South-Korea –
and has had its own representative office in Beijing since
2000.
Here however, experience has shown that it is
extremely demanding to penetrate the market in the
world’s most populous country. For a relatively small

30 •
ELOPAK – 50 YEARS AND READY FOR MORE
player such as Elopak, this could easily become too
resource-demanding. The building of the planned
converter plant for Pure-Pak blanks in Shanghai has
therefore been called off, and management is working on
defining a new strategy for China and Eastern Asia.
Future independent growth
The other major dimension for Elopak’s further development,
the organisational dimension, must be seen in the
light of the fact that an aggressive and determined
Elopak should grow independently – without the market
weight that acquisition of the twice-as-large, Swiss
beverage carton manufacturer SIG would have given –
but with nonetheless, a greater opportunity to develop on
its own terms from the position of third-largest player in
the market.
Third place is a good attack position for those with a
sharp competitive instinct, and Elopak is well equipped to
go on the offensive, with short chains of command and
the ability to re-organise quickly.
Moreover, a great many clients have little desire to
see the dominant Tetra Pak and heavyweight Rank Group
– whose acquisitions include SIG and a couple of medium-sized
American players – gain more market power
than necessary. They see the value in Elopak behaving
like an aggressive, innovative player who bring balance to
the competitive picture.
United and visible
And although the buy-out
attempt was not successful, it
did provide a wealth of new
experience and knowledge.
Amongst other things, the comprehensive
processes and
reports that had to be made,
and which involved a great
many personnel, contributed to
providing Elopak with a deeper
insight into its own strengths
and weaknesses. This gives
the company a stronger platform
from which to plot a
course for the future.
The implementation of
strategies and plans will however
be challenging. Elopak is
very international: only 7.5 percent
of its employees are in
Norway. Many of its units
around the world are, furthermore,
the result of acquisitions,
with significant differences in
company culture on top of
national differences. Elopak
has a tradition of employing
local managers: exporting
Norwegian personnel to tell
Germans or Saudi-Arabians
how to run their businesses
has never been an aim.
All these factors combine to make managing the
company a real challenge, particularly in the light of the
fact that it is now vital to make Elopak more united and
visible in the market, due to globalisation and the
importance of putting Elopak’s collective resources to
ever better use. Sub-cultures can quickly become
obstructive. It’s important to find effective structures that
ensure integration and unity, irrespective of all
differences. Amongst other things, Elopak must have one
integrated commercial management team at the top,
whilst at the same time ensuring that there is little
distance between customer service and decision-makers,
locally as well as at group level. This is a vital quality to
safeguard. Elopak is close to its customers and their
issues determine how Elopak acts.
All this puts great demands on the individual
employee’s drive and enthusiasm. These are attributes
that have never been difficult to mobilise: Elopak is
literally bursting with people who are passionate about
both the company and its products. Along with the
knowledge and skills of its people, this passionate
participation is the company’s most important asset.

Thank you!
The Editorial Board would like to thank the many Elopak employees who
contributed to this booklet in the form of conversations, contributions,
facts and opinions on the text. We also would like to thank two retirees,
ex-Sales Director Harald Riiber and Sales Manager Tron Bye, for their
valuable contributions.
Hardcopy sources
The presentation of Elopak’s establishment and early years is, to a great extent, based on source material from
Elopak’s archives, among them a memo by Edgar J. Johannesen in J. L. Tiedemanns Tobaksfabrikk; company
magazine Elopak Inside from February 1997; the lecture Några minnen från den svenska mejeri- och
förpakningsmarknaden före och efter introduktionen av Pure-Pak written by Arne Ställberg, ex-Manager of Elopak
in Sweden. The presentation of Ex-Cell-O’s role in the development of the Pure-Pak system is based partly on
unpublished notes and lectures by Ex-Cell-O Corporation’s management, partly on the 1955 study Ex-Cell-O
Corporation under the auspices of Harvard Business School, and on articles taken from various, more recent trade
journals. Among the sources for the sections on the development of the milk carton, Ansgar Welle in particular
should be mentioned here: Om pappflasker for K-melk, dissertation from Norges Landbrukshøgskole [now the
Norwegian University of Life Sciences], 1951. Information on the introduction to Norway of disposable packaging
for milk was taken from the following books: Sigve Erland, Meieribrukets tekniske utvikling, Trondheim 1981; Karl
Nilsen, Meieriet i Asker 50 år 1938-1988, Asker 1987; Kåre J. Monsen, Historien om meieriemballasjen, Norske
Meierier 1987. Certain information in the booklet is also taken from or confirmed in a range of trade publications,
journals and Internet sites, the details of which it is beyond the capacity of this publication to reproduce.
Elopak – 50 years and ready for more
Published by Elopak AS, Norway, September 2007. Reproduction only if sources are credited.
Editorial Board: Richard Taylor, Jutta Pinnerød, Erik Akre, Hans Gudmund Tvedt
Text: Hans Gudmund Tvedt, Wittenland kommunikasjon Ltd., Oslo
Graphic design and production: Kampen Grafisk a.s, Oslo
Copyright: Elopak AS, 2007. Pure-Pak® is a registered trademark of Elopak AS
MILJØMERKET
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