Operating a few months shy of a century, Monte Package Company is planning to cut the ribbon next month on its brand-new corporate headquarters in Riverside. As a modern office structure, it’s what company leaders describe as a sensible, overdue, and two-million-dollar investment. For the region, however, it signals a clear and enduring commitment to Southwest Michigan.
On its face, the new building represents the evolution of the company and allows the office team to move out of an endearing-but-somewhat-dated brick shipping depot to work in a more open and collaborative environment. Built for expansion, the new 6,500 square foot facility is bright with natural light, tall ceilings, modern amenities, and supported by the hidden infrastructure of the latest available technology.
Sam Monte, Director of Sales and Operations and fourth generation from the company’s founding, said the team had been thinking about a new headquarters for some time. He said they started getting serious about constructing a new corporate office building three or four years ago.
“We’ve been based here in Riverside since our founding in 1925. Enough additions and renovations went on in the existing office where we were sort of maxed out and we didn’t have any more room to go left or right or up. So, we were able to pull together this plan to build our new corporate office headquarters that serves our three facilities from Michigan to Florida for all our employees here locally.”
Monte said in 2022, the planning started with initial designs, size and layout concepts, and carefully reviewing what pain points the new building might solve.
“We didn’t have a good space to onboard new employees. We didn’t have a space to have a meeting with more than three people, where people four and five would be standing room only. We didn’t have a space for people to sit at a table and have lunch. It wasn’t so much that we needed to double the size of our working environment, we just sort of needed a reset in the setup and design of where we wanted people and how we wanted people situated.”
About a year ago, Monte Package Company broke ground to start construction. Just 12 months later, Monte said employees moved from the existing facility on a Wednesday morning and by midday Thursday, they were back at full operation in the new space.
“We got a little lucky with some favorable weather, which allowed the construction team at Pearson to really keep cranking.”
Pearson Construction Company handled the project. Pearson’s in-house design team, TERA Architects, worked with Monte Package leaders to develop the design and then Pearson Construction built the facility.
For a company that’s spent nearly 100 years evolving its product to adapt to market and consumer demands, it appeared to be a gamble to double down on new office space – especially because so many people were still working remotely in the wake of the pandemic. Add to that the glut of existing office space across the nation and economic uncertainty – many companies might have put such a plan on hold. Monte said the decision to move forward was clear from the outset.
“We’ve been in this community, Southwest Michigan and Riverside, for a hundred years. We could have probably rented at least twice as much space, maybe got something in a slightly fancier location, or maybe a restaurant on the first floor. But that would have taken us out of Riverside.”
Monte said the corporate office is an anchor to the other facilities in Riverside, specifically a handful of warehouses where employees can see and test products and show customers their operations.
“This rolls back into the level of service that we can supply to our customers. It allows us to keep a very close pulse on the quality of the products. Also, with some of the different volatility in the economy over the past couple years, we received a lot of support from our parent company, Bunzl, to say, ‘Okay, they’ve been there. This is where they’ve got a lot of other investment, it doesn’t make sense to pick up and move somewhere else.’ They supported us in that logic and mentality, supported the developers of this office, primarily Tony, my dad, really lobbying for the next generation of key employees here.”
The former headquarters is less than a hundred yards from the new building and Monte said it will remain in operation, though it will likely be used for other things like employee training, a sample room, and maybe a dedicated product display area.
At 6,500 square feet, the new space is significantly larger than the original footprint of the now-former headquarters. As for when the next expansion will occur, Monte said he can’t say, but when it happens, they’ll be ready.
“We’ve been very blessed to be a company that has seen steady growth over all these different past generations and decades of people working here. And that’s the objective, to keep growing. Sometimes that’s slower than we want. Sometimes we get big jumps. So yes, we are looking to grow.”
Monte added that with growth, there’s a need for more people and he said that’s a goal as well.
“We want to grow and continue to build this team and continue to have additional key players that can contribute and allow for more of that healthy growth. So, we’re in this space now and it was designed to have an easy renovation addition if we wanted to add 2,500 more square feet of office space, and maybe 30,000 square feet of warehousing space. Down the road, if there’s a reason to add more warehousing, we’ve got the space.”
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Monte Package Company was founded in 1925 and currently carries more than 1,500 products in their inventory, supplying a variety of packaging products to a diversified range of agricultural customers in all 50 states in the U.S. plus customers in Canada, Mexico, the Caribbean, and other international locations. In 2018, Monte Package was acquired by parent company Bunzl PLC and still operates as a family-owned business.
