U.S. Display Group (CONT’D FROM PAGE 46)
ness was important, but safety was critical. We had to fix this immediately.” Thus began U.S. Display Group’s focus on safety. Moore drew on his experience at Rock-Tenn, where he had worked 10 years earlier. The company was huge on safety, he says, and was one of the initial drivers of the “culture of safety” that has come to dominate every seg- ment of the corrugated industry.
but that was exactly what Linpac’s owners liked about it. Because it owned sheet feeders in Atlanta, Greensboro (NC) and Ft. Worth, not only was Linpac adding a valuable and “value-added” business to its growing portfolio, but it was also creating an outlet for sheets coming out of its When Moore became plant manager in 1998, the com- pany was doing $8-9 million annually in a 120,000-square- foot facility with 50-60 employees, including three or four salespeople. In 2006, Linpac attracted the attention of Dennis Mehiel, the corrugated industry maven who had been buying and transforming corrugated companies into profitability since the 1960s. In 2006, Mehiel purchased the U.S. holdings of Linpac, which consisted of the afore- mentioned sheet feeders and a brown box plant in Atlanta that had been named Eagle Container after the entity in Tullahoma. Linpac’s mill in Cowpens, South Carolina was also part of the deal for Mehiel, who decided his new con- glomerate should be named U.S. Corrugated, except for the former Eagle Display company, which Moore suggest- ed being renamed U.S. Display Group to differentiate it from the rest of U.S. Corrugated’s portfolio of companies. Mehiel continued the “buying spree” that included eight existing facilities, as well as a greenfield startup in Ohio and many other acquisitions. In a short amount of time, U.S. Corrugated became, back then, the largest pri- vately held corrugated company in the country, with 26 box making and display facilities, including the mill. Greg Moore assumed the role of regional vice presi- dent for U.S. Corrugated in 2010, running eight of its plants in the south. A couple of years later, along came KapStone, which purchased 16 of Mehiel’s 26 facilities, including the mill at Cowpens and the eight plants Moore was oversee- ing. He had the opportunity to move to Chicago with Kap- Stone to rejoin an integrated, but it was an opportunity he respectfully declined. “I liked the Kapstone Management team, I just didn’t really want to move, and I loved working for Dennis Mehiel,” he says. “Also, home for me was Tul- lahoma, Tennessee. I was born here, and I grew up here and when I was younger, I could not wait to get away. But once I got married and started having kids, I couldn’t wait to get back.” Atlanta sheet feeder. Ripe For Acquisition With Moore steadily at the helm of U.S. Display Group in Tullahoma, Mehiel continued doing what he did, which was buying, selling, consolidating and rebuilding corrugat- ed box plants around the country. Moore, meanwhile, was home sweet home and charged with fulfilling the enor- mous potential of an aging display manufacturer that was trudging along with old equipment and high turnover. The Number One Focus: Safety “The first thing I noticed after taking over this plant in 1998 was that there were 27 OSHA recordable accidents in this factory the year before I got here,” says Moore. “This was unacceptable. Everything else about running the busi-
“At the time we had about 55 or 60 employees, turn- over was high and there was not a real structure in place for pay or advancement. But it wasn’t until there was a se- rious lost-time accident that employees began buying into the culture of safety. So we started driving that home and driving it home hard. To our credit, we have now not had a lost-time accident in over 17 years,” says Moore proudly. “Further, it seemed like everyone who worked here I knew from growing up here or I knew their kids or their parents, which made it all the more important that our number one focus became safety.”
Right behind safety was quality. According to Moore, the company manufactured an excellent product, there just were not any formal processes in place. He started pushing to get ISO certified and hired a safety and quality manager, which he had also done at Rock-Tenn. He helped U.S. Display Group employees perform stretching exercises before their shift, part of the company’s safety initiative to re- duce workplace injuries.
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