Mills Industries fabricates a variety of products from corrugated plastic

With an ancestry rooted in the heyday of New Hampshire’s shoe industry, Laconia’s Mills Industries, Inc., now fabricates a high-tech product in a nondescript brick and concrete block building at the corner of Water and Fair Streets.

Third generation President Michael Mills speaks with pride about how he and his grandfather Everett, the founder of Mills and Sons Box Co., bargained over how many pennies he would pay his grandson for assembling set-up boxes for shoe manufacturing companies.

Today, the Mills family and their few employees produce an unbelievable variety of corrugated plastic containers for an almost endless number of possible uses.

A moving company called upon Mills Industries to manufacture a heavy-duty knock-down box to be used for transporting and storing smaller boxes containing household goods or office records. Measuring approximately three by four by four feet and constructed of roughly half-inch thick corrugated plastic, the box is virtually indestructible and impervious to water damage.

Another, much smaller black box resembling a container used to transport movie film reels is used to store and transport delicate parts used in explosive devices.

Then, there are the multitude of promotional kit boxes in an almost infinite variety of colors, shapes and sizes.

Packaging for scientific and medical clean rooms is also a specialty. Paper and cardboard make dust. Plastic does not, making it a suitable material for use in clean rooms.

A "big box" retailer recently purchase collapsible displays. They will be used in the retailer's garden centers this coming spring for seed packet sales.

Bright yellow, interlocking warning signs for building and other construction sites are also featured in the company's product brochures.

Mills and Sons Box Co. was founded shortly after the end of World War II by Everett Mills. It was located in one of Manchester’s Millyard Buildings. It was incorporated as Mills Industries, Inc., by the founder’s son, Bert Mills, in 1973.

Bert started coming up to the Lakes Region in the 1970s. He purchased a camp in Sanbornton. Later he moved to Gale Avenue in Laconia, almost around the corner from where Mills Industries in now located.

When the owner of the Manchester property where the company was located decided not to renew its lease, Bert asked himself why he was commuting more than 100 miles round trip to work. He purchased the 30,000 square foot Water Street building across from Boulia-Gorrell Lumber in 1985.

Bert Mills was also the one who foresaw the total decline of the Granite State shoe industry. He started looking for something different and ran across plastic corrugated material. The conventional wisdom of the time said using corrugated plastic for boxes would not work.

The new conventional wisdom now carries the name "Millplast", and the variety of configurations is almost infinite.

According to son Michael Mills, his father gets the credit for inventing the U. S. Postal Service’s corrugated plastic tote box. The post office’s demand for the white plastic boxes letter carriers use when they sort and transport mail ultimately eclipsed the capacity of a manufacturer the size of Mills Industries.

The ‘Millplast’ tote box lives on, however. It is tapered, has handles, and can be equipped with a wire or metal rim. It can be used over and over again.

The ‘using it over and over’ part is the key to the success of "Millplast" and Mills Industries. For example, Pitney Bowes, the manufacturer of postage mailing machines took the recommendation of its packaging supplier and distributor and started using the Mills Industry totes. According to an article that appeared in the trade publication Packaging World, Pitney Bowes thought it could recoup the 50-percent up charge of the plastic containers compared to the corrugated equivalent just by using them over and over. The cardboard boxes used for shipping were good for up to five trips. The ‘MIllplast’ equivalents were good for 200 to 300 round trips. At the time of the trade journal’s article in 2000, Pitney Bowes had not needed to purchase replacements from Mills Industries.

A more local example is Town and Country Reprographics located on North Main Street in Concord. According to Vice President Victor Storykovich, “We had a customer who repeated the same order frequently. The "Millplast" boxes Michael Mills developed for us had a top that did not require sealing. When our customer removed his printed material from the boxes, they could be collapsed and returned to us for reuse. Unfortunately, that customer has gone out of business, and we don’t have many of those boxes left around here. I think they went home with people who recognized how great they are for storage. Those boxes kept a lot of cardboard out of the solid waste stream.”

Mills Industries market area covers the eastern seaboard, with the highest concentration of customers in New England.

The third generation president of the company recalled going off to college and trying his hand working for other companies. He quickly concluded he preferred to be in the family business. He came back to work for his father in the mid-1980s. Michael’s father Bert is still alive and asking questions about how things are going at the company.

Mills Industries is a family affair. Wife Kathy does all of the front office work. “She keeps this place running,” Michael said.

Son Justin, a junior at Laconia High School helps out from time to time, as does daughter Amanda, a freshman at Lakes Region Community College. Kathy’s sister, Karen Stewart is also part of the operation. She spends a lot of her time out on the factory floor.

Counting the family, there are seven full-time employees.

One — Robert ‘Bobby’ Lampron of Laconia — has worked for the company since he graduated from high school in the Manchester area 43 years ago.

“I was hired by Michael’s father and grandfather when the company was still in Manchester." he said. "I remember making the shoe boxes. I’ve always had good bosses here. Sometimes we have arguments, but they are always about the best way to get the jobs done."

For Michael Mills and Mills Industries, sustainability is a big deal. “Recycling is extremely important. The single-stream recycling the City of Laconia has embarked upon is a very good thing.”

“Mills Industries does not put any of the plastic waste it generates into the city’s solid waste stream, but, as a company, we recognize how important recycling is. Single-stream recycling means the city can take virtually all kinds of plastic,” Mills continued.

“We generate polypropylene, which is not on the list of what the city can take. Our waste is ground up and turned into black corrugated sheets that, in turn, can be fabricated into boxes and other specialized containers.”

For the future, the Mills family and their employees at Mills Industries, Inc., are looking into the production of re-useable plastic shipping containers. “It’s an entirely new market,” Michael Mills said.

As for the impact of the economy on the business, he said they have been careful. “The economy has been a ‘bear’ but we are going to be okay!”