Roger Miller, 2002 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year — Industrial Application Manufacturing
© St. Louis Small Business Monthly, The Source for Business Owners June 2002.

While working in the corrugated box industry, Roger Miller heard so many stories from purchasing managers about the difficulty finding good suppliers for flexible packaging, he decided to start a company and solve the problem.

Thus, Gateway Packaging Company was born in 1982. Gateway Packaging is a maker of high quality, flexible packaging materials for the human food, pet food, industrial, chemical and medical industries throughout the world.

Miller began the company working from his home with two customers. The company began to quickly grow. Today, Gateway Packaging employs a total of 281 employees.

Miller purchased the company’s first printing press in 1985 to print die-cut lidding stock. In 1987, Miller purchased his second press and the old Granite City Dairy building. At that time, he had four employees and the volume of orders began to increase.

In 1991, he built a 20,000 sq. ft. building in Northgate Industrial Park, in Illinois, and added about 12 more employees. At this time, two more presses were purchased and he hired a salesman to help expand the customer base. In 1994, a 80,000 sq. ft. expansion was built. This new expansion housed a new wide web press, slitter and laminator.

Gateway began printing pet food bags in 1995, and in 1999 the first bag converting machine was purchased to enable the company to make finished pet food bags. Shortly after this, another press, slitter and miscellaneous equipment was purchased along with three additional bag machines. All the while, the business (bag business and flexible packaging business) and the number of employees continued to grow.

Miller purchased Percy Kent Bag Co., in Kansas City, Mo., two years ago. Percy Kent had been in business since 1875 as a manufacturer of multi-wall bags. This Kansas City facility employs 181 and is a major bag supplier in the United States.

One of the company’s strengths is its flexibility. Gateway Packaging has both narrow-web and wide-web printing capabilities, which allow for versatility in the types of products that can be converted. The company’s flexibility allows it to run small quantity orders for mom-and-pop businesses, while being large enough to run millions of items for Fortune 500 companies.