Tetra Pak

Founded more than 60 years ago, Tetra Pak has grown to become the world's largest food packaging company, operating in more than 170 countries and employing more than 22,000 staff.

The company owes its success to - and takes its name from - the tetrahedron food package, which revolutionised the storage of items such as milk, soups and drinks.

Tetra Pak was created by Ruben Rausing in 1951, as a subsidiary to Akerland & Rausing, a food carton company which was set up by Rausing and the industrialist Erik Åkerlund in Malmo, Sweden, in 1929.   

Rausing, who had studied in New York during the early 1920s, invested in food packaging techniques after becoming inspired by self-service grocery stores he saw in the US, which were rarely found in Europe at the time.

Rausing and Åkerlund bought a factory in Sweden but by 1933 Åkerlund sold his share to Rausing, whose family later oversaw a dramatic expansion of the business.

For some four decades, the company was headed by Rausing's sons, Hans and Gad, who oversaw its growth from a small family business with only six employees in the early 1950s to a major multinational.

By 1960 the company had opened a plant in Mexico and was producing more than 1billion cartons a year. Within four years, the production output had more than trebled.

Ruben Rausing died in 1983, by which time the company was running plants in Pakistan, Kenya and Finland.

More than 129billion Tetra Pak units were produced by the company in 2006.

The company is now privately owned by the family of Gad Rausing through the Swiss-based holding company Tetra Laval.