Article: BERRY PLASTICS' MOVE INTO THERMOFORMING HAS POSITIONED FIRM TO MOVE INTO NEW VENTURES, EXPAND ITS GLOBAL MARKET SUCCESS STORY

In 1998, a couple of Berry Plastics executives watched a California ice-cream factory try to make cups out of a fairly new type of plastic.

The task ultimately proved beyond the company's reach. But seeing those attempts planted an idea in the Berry executives' minds.

"If you guys could figure out how to do that, you would own the industry," someone at the California factory had told them.

Ira G. Boots, Berry chairman and chief executive officer, and Brent Beeler, chief operating officer, returned to Evansville with both inspiration and serious doubts. Berry Plastics already had used the plastic in question, called polypropylene, to make many of its products. It was a common material, for ...

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