Dallas Business Journal
Sits Down With Greg Wren

Date Posted:

 

Greg Wren took over as chief executive officer of AmeriPac earlier this year and has big growth plans for the company his father started in 1989.

"Within the next three years, we should probably be in the $18 million range," Wren said of revenue goals. He projects his 2017 revenue to be around $12 million.

"Five years," he added, "we should be at the $20 million range. And at 10 years really would be the $30 million range."

The firm has historically been a secondary packaging company. For example, a pharmaceutical company (90 percent of its business comes from that industry) will send bottles of product to AmeriPac's headquarters, which are right next to DFW Airport. AmeriPac will apply whatever packaging the client wants consumers to see, like shrink wrap or cardboard, and send the product to retailers.

However, Wren wants to offer more parts of the supply chain to his clients. The company also offers warehousing and secondary manufacturing solutions (such as putting together different parts of a broom) right now.

To gear up for its expected growth, AmeriPac added 120,000 square feet to its existing 162,500, for a total of 282,500 square feet. With the real estate addition, AmeriPac's capacity is at about 40 percent, Wren said.

"I expect within the next 12-14 months for us to be at about 80-85 percent capacity," Wren said. "That's my goal. And that's very achievable."

As the company expands, the company's average of 150 employees will increase about 50 percent to 225 employees.

AmeriPac gets about 95 percent of its materials from local vendors to reduce handling costs. If you're shipping 10,000 cardboard boxes, shipping long distances can get expensive.

"We don't have the lead time to get anything from China," Wren said. "China is literally about six months from start to finish. And we're not buying true commodity type items. We're buying packaging materials, which is much cheaper and more cost effective for us to buy locally."

DFW company seeks to triple revenue with more supply chain solutions

To talk more about his business, Wren sat down with the Dallas Business Journal.

To achieve you growth goals, would you consider taking outside capital?

Yes.

Like private equity?

That's always a possibility, sure. Private equity, strategic partners, private investment groups — any of that that would be willing to not only provide some of the additional capital but provide the additional expertise in an industry or vertical that we would like to pursue.

What about acquisitions?

Yes, it's always a possibility. Right company, right size, right EBITA for what fits into our wheelhouse, then we'd definitely take a look at that.

Is there any region of the country you'd like to break into through acquisition?

Getting a presence in either the East Coast or West Coast on a much smaller scale would be very advantageous to us just because, especially in the Northeast, New Jersey is the pharma capital of the world, it seems like. The pure concentration of the number of opportunities and customers that would be in that smaller geographic area would be very advantageous.

Ninety percent of your business is pharmaceuticals. Are you happy with that concentration or do you want to diversify your customer base?

I'm comfortable with where we are. Am I happy with it? No. I think we should probably try to diversify our risk by diversifying our customer base and diversifying our industries. Getting a little bit more into the consumer goods industry, getting a little bit more into — while it still is somewhat pharma — the dietary and nutritional supplement business. That's a growing business. So, if we can get into some of that industry and get away a little bit from being so pharma and prescription loaded, that would be beneficial to us.

Evan Hoopfer
Staff Writer
Dallas Business Journal

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