Royal Containers’ New St. Thomas Plant a Showcase of Smart Design

Kim Nelson , president and CEO of Royal Containers Ltd ., has created in her company’s new plant in St. Thomas, Ontario, an elegant marriage of efficiency and style.

The 152,000-square-foot plant, which hosted its grand opening this past September, strikes visitors with its architectural appeal and engages employees with a fluidly flowing office and production environment. And though the St. Thomas plant stands today as the product of a deliberate, creative plan, the site was nearly ruled out at first. “When we looked at the outside of this building, and where we’re sitting today, it would be one of those moments when you say, ‘You really need a great vision to see this,’” says Kim. “So, we dismissed it at first.”

Royal Containers is based in Brampton, Ontario, in the Greater Toronto area, colloquially known as the “GTA.” It was founded as a single sheet plant in 1980 by Ross Nelson, and Kim Nelson joined the company in 1992. In 2009, Ross handed on the leadership to his next generation, and Kim became president and CEO. In addition to its sheet plant locations in Brampton and St. Thomas, Royal Containers is also a shareholder in TenCorr, a sheet feeder in neighboring Mississauga, founded in 1983 by Ross, and nine other independents. In 2013, Royal further integrated vertically when the company, along with Cascades , TenCorr, and Jamestown Container Companies , became a shareholder in Greenpac Mill, a 600,000-ton-per-year recycled containerboard mill in Niagara Falls, New York. Royal Containers employs 300 people in its two converting operations.

The long road to Royal’s new plant in St. Thomas began in 2010, when Royal acquired Morphy Containers Ltd., a sheet plant in London, Ontario, 120 miles west-southwest of Toronto. Continued growth in this market, combined with the physical limitations of Morphy Containers’ existing building, were two of the reasons forcing the decision to relocate. The third was Royal’s 2020 acquisition of C&B Display Packaging in Mississauga. “We were having to do some major infrastructure changes, and the building was quite old,” Kim says of the Morphy site. “We were starting to burst at the seams in London, and then in January 2020, we purchased C&B.”

Now faced with two existing plants, both overcapacity in a very tight commercial real estate market in southern Ontario, Kim had a decision to make: Invest in a new building in Toronto or find a location farther west and combine both plants. “We initially said, ‘Let’s go find something in the GTA,’ but we exhausted everything that was build-to-suit with nice highway exposure,” she recalls. “So, we started looking toward Cambridge,” referring to the city of 150,000 people about 50 miles west, “and there’s nothing available there either. So, we expanded the search geographically, and we found this spot.”

Kim possesses a key strength that makes her a great entrepreneurial leader: She knows her own limitations and has surrounded herself with a great team. Royal’s key management team consists of Chief Financial Officer Connie VanBoxtel, Production Manager Brent Hill, Sales Manager Kirk Cormier, Customer Service Manager Terri-Lynn Levesque, and Human Resources Manager Steve Robinson.

Greg Marcella, vice president of operations at the St. Thomas site, has been with Royal for 10 years. He was a key player in scouting out a new location for Royal. After earning a degree in packaging development technology at Mohawk College in Hamilton, Ontario, he began his career at Unilever in Brampton, where he dealt with the company’s vendors of plastics, film, paperboard, and corrugated. “That got me experience with everything,” he says.

After leaving Unilever, he worked for other industries in their packaging needs, ending up squarely on the paper side of the business at Sonoco. From there, in 2013, he joined Royal. “I’ve been here 10 years,” he says, “and I was the plant manager, then vice president of operations, now the general manager.” Pointing to the conference room around him, he adds, “It’s been a crazy journey to realize something like this.”

Marcella recounts the first visit to the prospective location: “I said, ‘Kim, I think we found a building.’” The building was the former site of an injection-molding company that had gone bankrupt. “Just watching Kim’s face as we drove up, I thought, ‘This isn’t going to work. I don’t think we can sell the vision or paint the picture for her to believe we can get there,’” he recalls. “It was a gut moment, for sure.”

How, then, did Kim Nelson and her team arrive at the decision to lease the St. Thomas facility that was, for all intents and purposes, ruled out? First, consider its location. St. Thomas is 18 miles south of London on the north shore of Lake Erie. Thus, for the employees of former Morphy Containers in London, the new location was convenient. “We could have moved to northern London and added 45 minutes to everyone’s commute and still be in the same city,” says Marcella.

However, he adds, they saw in the St. Thomas site an opportunity to give the employees “an improvement that we could deliver to everybody’s life.” The town is an attractive destination, having been named in 2021 by Maclean’s magazine as the best place to live in Ontario and the third best place in all of Canada. The region is largely agricultural, although St. Thomas itself, historically a railroad center, has maintained some of that heavier industry such as metal stampings. Automotive is also moving in, with Volkswagen AG building what it calls “the world’s largest” electric-vehicle battery plant, which is slated to open in 2027.

Kim explains the larger reason for the change in their first impression of the site: “Driving away I said, ‘Greg, we have a decision to make: We can invest in real estate—it’s always a great investment. Even if we have to put in $20–$25 million to build a building and own it, we can do that. We’ll put everything from the two companies there with existing equipment.’”

This option, however, did not sit well with her because she felt that level of investment would not benefit the next generation of owners—a real estate play would be too long a payback for them, and they would be limited in the marketplace with the older equipment from the former Morphy and C&B sites. The other option was to lease a building and invest $15 million in new equipment, a choice she made because of a lesson she says she learned from her father, Ross. “I can’t be expert in everything. Ross taught me to stick to what I know, which is manufacturing boxes. I don’t know the real estate market. I don’t know the large investment markets. I know how to manufacture boxes.”

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Written by Alton Steven Young , AICC Ambassador At Large for AICC's magazine, BoxScore.