Display maker Menasha comes to Canada

An American retail display company is hopping across the border with the purchase of a Canadian display maker.

Menasha Corporation, maker of merchandisers and packaging for retail in food, home and personal care in the U.S., Europe and Asia, announced its purchase of PearceWellwood, based in Brampton, Ont., last week.

Dennis Bonn, Menasha’s vice-president of marketing at Menasha Packaging, told Canadian Grocer that “this is our first venture into the Canadian market.”

Menasha’s business in Canada up until now consisted solely of shipping “a little bit of product from the States, but that’s all,” he added.

PearceWellwood operates two facilities in Brampton, employing 140 people. It makes corrugated retail displays in the consumer packaged goods industry for brands such as Starbucks and Bic Pens.

PearceWellwood will become part Menasha’s packaging subsidiary. Menasha has also taken an ownership interest in Tencorr Packaging, a corrugated sheet manufacturer, from PearceWellwood’s privately held parent company, Pearce Group.

Menasha and PearceWellwood together will offer CPG companies in Canada “expertise in display design, manufacturing and fulfilment,” Menasha’s president and CEO, Jim Kotek, said in a release.

Menasha is headquartered in Neenah, Wisconsin and operates 75 facilities in the North America, Europe and Asia, employing 5,000 people.

It says that it creates more than 40 million in-store point-of-purchase displays each year in more than 55,000 retail locations for hundreds of CPG brands.

Among the brands it has done work for: Procter & Gamble, Hershey, Energizer, Merck and Reckitt Benckiser.

Last fall, Menasha announced it was developing in-store displays incorporating iBeacon technology that would give shoppers immediate access to "product content, promotional offers, ratings and reviews ” on their smartphones.

The displays would also give CPGs and retailers better measurement on shopper behaviour.