Atlas Container (CONT’D FROM PAGE 1)
A Practical Entry Into Corrugated Paul Centenari, Atlas Container’s CEO, did not enter the corrugated industry through a family connection or a long apprenticeship on the plant floor. His background was in finance, and his path into the box business was shaped less by intention than by a series of practical decisions that eventually pointed him and his brother Peter in a new di- rection. After graduating from business school, Centenari took a job in investment banking. It lasted ten months. “I got fired,” Paul says with a laugh, reflecting on his young, headstrong attitude that earned his termination. “The next day I called my brother and said, ‘I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is obvious. The good news is that I’ve got ten months of experience, and I think we can do something with that.’”
The brothers started a small investment banking firm, closed a handful of deals, and ran the business for about three years. Eventually, both came to the same conclusion: “We decided we wanted to get real jobs so we started looking at industries where we could actually buy a com- pany,” Paul says. The brothers’ research took them through a wide range of sectors, but corrugated packaging stood out for rea- sons that were almost entirely practical: It was regional, it was relatively low-tech, and it relied on equipment that retained its value over long periods of time. Further, cus- tomers tended to be repeat buyers, purchasing the same products year after year with incremental changes rather than constant reinvention. “It wasn’t glamorous,” Centenari says. “But it made sense.” In 1987, through then AICC president, Steve Young, Centenari obtained a directory of box plants and began reaching out directly. He and his brother Peter contacted roughly 500 companies, focusing primarily on smaller, in- dependent sheet plants. About 25 responded. With no background in corrugated manufacturing, the CONTINUED ON PAGE 22 The Fosber corrugator, which includes components from mul- tiple generations of equipment.
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Len Prazych at 518-366-9017 lprazych@nvpublications.com
20 February 23, 2026
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