"Insane Companies No One Talks About" Episode #4: Tetra Laval (Part 1)
A family business doing ~$18B per year selling... paper cartons!
Overview
The name “Tetra Laval” might not ring a bell, but I can almost guarantee you’ve bought several of their products this week.
Meet… the Tetra Pak! If you buy any grocery items in a carton like this, it’s likely a “Tetra Pak” made by parent company Tetra Laval.
I’m being completely serious when I say I’m obsessed with this company’s story. They are the world’s largest producer of paper cartons for liquid foods, doing €15.9B ($17–18B) in net sales with over 34,000 employees.
What’s even crazier is they are a fully private, family-controlled business!
????!!!
I’d assume the valuation of the company could be anywhere in the ballpark of $20-40B (but of course, we don’t actually know what the true valuation is because we have such limited information on their financials).
In this article, I’ll discuss how they became so successful. In Part 2 (coming next week), I’ll explore the surprising reason why I think we could see a big surge in demand for Tetra Paks over the next decade.
Beginnings
Tetra Pak was founded in Sweden in 1951 by Ruben Rausing, an entrepreneur who was inspired by the increase in convenient self-service grocery stores in the US.
The company developed a tetrahedron-shaped plastic-lined paper milk carton.
This product gave Tetra Pak its name and identity. While moderately successful, the original Tetra Pak product didn’t put the company on the map.
Their real breakthrough came in the mid/late 1960’s when they debuted the Tetra Brik Aseptic (the standard rectangle carton you’d recognize today) alongside their aseptic packaging technology.
This aseptic technology was revolutionary because it allowed liquids to be pasteurized and then packaged into shelf-stable sterile containers. In fact, many people regard it as the single greatest food packaging innovation of the 20th century.
Throughout the next decade, Tetra Pak became a massive global success and expanded to dozens of countries.
What’s so incredible is that the Rausing family essentially spent ~15-20 years iterating in food packaging before the company succeeded. (Shout out to all the passionate and curious founders reading this article— you are the real ones!)
Tetra Laval’s Evolution
Ruben’s sons, Hans and Gad Rausing, were heavily involved in leading Tetra Pak as the company grew. The company evolved in many ways over the years:
In 1991, Tetra Pak acquired Alfa Laval, a major processing and dairy-equipment company, for ~$2.5B. The farm-equipment division was later spun into what is now DeLaval.
In 2001, they acquired Sidel, a French plastics packager that made standard PET plastic bottles.
These three units (Tetra Pak, DeLaval, and Sidel) make up the major business units of today’s Tetra Laval Group.
In 1995, Hans sold his half of the company to Gad.
Today, the business is still fully family-owned, with two of Gad’s three children (Finn and Jörn) serving on the board alongside several external executives. His third child, Kirsten, retired from the board in 2023 (and has since done a ton of extremely cool philanthropy work!).
Another random/fun reason why I love this company’s story: Gad Rausing had a parallel career as a scholar focusing on prehistoric Scandinavian archaeology! When he was asked how he could run a global corporation while also doing archaeological research, he cited that there were “a fair number of left-over hours in airports and planes.” lol.
Today’s Products
Tetra Pak makes two main types of products: carton packages and the various filling/packaging equipment that go along with them. (I’ll focus on Tetra Pak here, as this arm of the company drives the vast majority of revenue.)
Tetra Pak cartons look like this, with several layers of the following materials:
Paperboard: provides structure and printing surface
Aluminum: barrier to light and oxygen
Polyethylene (plastic): sealing and food-contact layer
Food producers choose Tetra Paks for their products for many reasons:
They are much lighter and easier to transport than glass or aluminum cans.
Their box shape makes them stackable and easy to pack efficiently onto pallets.
They are shipped flat before filling, which dramatically lowers inbound packaging transport costs.
Paired with aseptic processing, they allow products to be shelf-stable without preservatives or a refrigerated supply chain.
Their multi-layer structure blocks light and oxygen, helping preserve flavor, color, and nutrients over long shelf lives.
Paper cartons might seem like a straightforward product, but the engineering challenges are multifaceted and complex. Not only are there structural and cost-saving challenges, but there are also many biological ones (keeping the product sterile, developing machines that allow for proper nitrogen dosing, limiting microbial growth while extending shelf life, etc.).
A big product focus for Tetra Pak over the last few years was the introduction of the Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf:
This carton has a paper-based barrier instead of a purely aluminum one.
^ This change reduces the aluminum content to only 0.05% (versus 5% in the earlier versions), and subsequently cuts the carton’s carbon footprint by a whopping ~33%!
As mentioned, Tetra Pak also sells a variety of specialized packaging equipment such as the following:
Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper - Flagship aseptic filling machine that uses electron-beam (eBeam) sterilization instead of traditional chemical sterilants, can produce up to 40,000 portion packs per hour (~11 packs/second!).
Tetra Pak Homogenizer with Circle Green Stainless Steel - Homogenizes products by using high pressure to break down large particles into smaller ones (improves shelf life and texture/flavor).
Tetra Pak Industrial Protein Mixer - Mixes liquid protein products and eliminates foam during mixing (important for reducing spills/waste)
Tetra Pak TT/3 UHH Filling Machine - Fills drinks very quickly, can also do different products at once (with different nitrogen dosing levels)
Financials
The company is private, so there isn’t a lot known about their financials. However, they publish a publicly-available report every year where they share revenue numbers as well as some other stats about the business.
In 2024, Tetra Laval Group reported €15.9B in net sales (~$17–18B), of which €12.8B (~$14B) came from Tetra Pak. (I’ll focus primarily on Tetra Pak in this section too, but check out the report here to read about DeLaval and Sidel!)
The last few years have been tough for grocery amidst declining consumer purchasing power. In spite of this, Tetra Laval’s revenue increased by 0.9% in 2024 (2.6% at comparable rates and scope). The company forecasts continued solid revenue growth in 2025.
They also broke out sales by region and category. Tetra Pak is a massive global business, with dairy products and juice driving the majority of revenue.
The report highlighted the importance of the new-and-improved Tetra Brik: “We continue to invest in the global deployment of our paper-based barrier. This brings Tetra Pak one step closer to its ambition of a beverage carton made solely from responsibly sourced renewable or recycled materials, fully recyclable and carbon neutral.”
They also discussed the continued success of their flagship aseptic product, noting that “the demand for our Tetra Pak E3/Speed Hyper, the world’s fastest carton packaging machine (40,000 packages per hour), accelerated globally.”
The report also mentioned the creation of a food biotech lab at Lund University in Sweden. The goal is to use the lab to enhance innovation and better understand microbial activity under different packaging conditions (I assume this is also very useful for recruiting future talent to the company!).
One thing I love about Tetra Pak is how genuinely “conscious capitalism” their culture is. Here is a quote directly from their 2025 report:
“As a producer of 178 billion paper-based carton packages in 2024, Tetra Pak has a role to play in helping to feed the growing global population by minimising food loss and waste, reducing climate impact, acting for nature and promoting circularity – while respecting human rights across our own operations and the value chain.”
Their work in developing countries is one example of this. In Rwanda, 38% of children under five have chronic malnutrition and 37% have anemia. Tetra Pak did a collaboration there where they aimed to deliver two million liters of shelf-stable milk to schools throughout the country. According to Tetra Pak: “This is particularly important in regions with unreliable electricity and a lack of cold chain infrastructure to ensure that even children in remote areas have access to safe, nutritious milk.”
They close out the report with a reference to “Strategy 2030,” noting that their goal is to provide the next generation of food production “with quality, sustainability, integration, and innovation creating value across our customers’ entire operations.”
Competitors
When it comes to aseptic paper-cartons specifically, Tetra Pak is the largest producer of aseptic liquid food cartons in the world.
There are two other companies, SIG Group (SIG Combibloc) and Elopak (Pure-Pak), that are also very dominant globally.
Together, these three players control ~35% of the liquid aseptic paper carton + machinery market. The rest of the market is made up of a few sizable competitors in China and North America, as well as many smaller regional competitors.
What I think is really interesting about this industry is that the switching costs are very high. Worldwide, there are thousands of large dairies and beverage plants built around Tetra Pak (or competitor) lines. Switching is very painful (very high capex costs, SKU redesigns, regulatory/legal considerations, etc.)
Notably, all the companies in this space appear to push the “low carbon, renewable, recyclable” positioning in their branding.
Recycling and Sustainability
Sustainability is a major priority for Tetra Pak - and for good reason. Not only is it good for the world, it also reduces their manufacturing costs.
Tetra Pak wants to develop “the world’s most sustainable food package.” In 2023, they began investing €100M per year on packaging R&D (and plan to continue that investment rate for 5-10 additional years).
This effort has been fruitful so far, as it resulted in the new Tetra Brik Aseptic 200 Slim Leaf we discussed earlier. Because this new carton uses so much less aluminum, it has a lower carbon footprint and is also less expensive.
In addition to the investment in R&D, Tetra Pak continually invests €40M/year in collection and recycling of their cartons. Current recycling rates are about 50% in Europe and 25% globally. To recycle Tetra Paks, you need to have a specialized facility that separates out the paper fibers from the aluminum and plastic components.
PolyAl is the name for the non-fiber part of the Tetra Pak carton that is left over after the paper is recycled - it is made of plastic and aluminum, and is used in non-food-contact items like outdoor furniture and transport crates/pallets.
Last year, Tetra Pak reported a 20% reduction in value chain greenhouse gas emissions in addition to a 47% reduction in GHG emissions (across operations since 2019)!
Closing Thoughts
It’s hard to overstate how much Tetra Pak has reshaped the way the world eats. Before their aseptic systems, getting safe/shelf-stable/nutrient-dense food to hundreds of millions of people was logistically brutal and extremely expensive.
Today, they power a huge share of that market (and yet, barely anyone talks about them in business world!).
Tetra Laval is also a bit of an anomaly: a third-generation, family-owned company of enormous scale that appears incredibly well-run and relentlessly long-term in its thinking. They’ve built a durable core business with a real moat, while continuing to place smart bets on new technologies, geographies, and product lines.
Their story reflects the advantages of being a private business. Having no public shareholders allows leadership to focus on long-term bets without stressing over quarterly growth numbers or whatever narrative Wall Street is slinging this week. (I highly doubt the Tetra Laval board has had to prioritize conversations about how to announce LLM integrations into their product lines haha.)
Anyways, I absolutely love this company, and I think it’s an example of the kind of positive impact businesses can have when packaged (lol) with a values-driven culture.
Please subscribe to my newsletter and check back next week for Part 2, where I’ll discuss the surprising reason why I think Tetra Pak could be one of the most well-positioned companies to watch over the next decade.