One of the most delicate and consequential searches CHI conducts is placing the first professional CEO into a family-owned packaging business. The candidate must simultaneously demonstrate the commercial and operational competence to transform the business, and the emotional intelligence to earn the trust of a founding family who have invested their life’s work in building it.
The Client Context
Our client was a third-generation family-owned corrugated converter with 340 employees, three sites in the Midlands, and annual revenue of approximately £42m. The founding family recognised that the business needed a step-change in operational performance and commercial strategy to remain competitive — but they had never had a non-family senior leader at CEO level. The brief was for a CEO who could modernise the business without destroying the culture that had built it.
Why the Search Was Complex
The specification sounds simple. In practice, the intersection of requirements was exceptionally narrow:
- Proven CEO or MD-level track record in a corrugated or allied paper-based packaging business
- Demonstrated success leading operational improvement in a family-owned or closely-held business (not just a corporate subsidiary)
- The interpersonal style and emotional intelligence to build trust with a family who had never relinquished operational control before
- A genuine belief in the long-term future of independent packaging converters — candidates who saw the role as a temporary stepping stone were explicitly excluded
The Process
The search ran for 17 weeks — longer than our average but significantly shorter than the 8-month timeline the client had estimated when they briefed us. We long-listed 22 candidates, of whom 8 met all four criteria. The shortlist of 3 candidates each spent a half-day on-site, meeting the founding family and senior management team in an informal setting before any formal interview.
The appointed candidate was a 51-year-old CEO from a comparable-sized independent corrugated converter in the East Midlands. She had delivered a 40% EBITDA improvement over a 5-year tenure through a combination of lean manufacturing, commercial repricing, and a capex investment in automated palletising and in-mould labelling capability.
The Outcome
18 months post-appointment: EBITDA has improved by 22%. Three legacy production lines have been replaced with one higher-capacity automated line. The business has won its first national retail grocery account. And — critically — the founding family remain actively involved as a non-executive board, with a relationship that the CEO describes as “genuinely collaborative.”
This is the outcome that makes specialist executive search meaningful: not just filling a role, but materially changing a business trajectory.