Harry Järund

"”Vi måste försöka komma ifrån det traditionella sättet att konstruera en förpackning. Jag tror att framtidens förpackningskonstruktion kommer att utgå ifrån hur man bygger öppningen, inte som det är nu, tvärtom”, sade Torudd och började förklara sina tankegångar. Torudd menade att företaget skulle satsa på en fyrkantig förpackning utan kontinuerlig fyllning. Istället för att lägga all vikt vid den kontinuerliga fyllningen skulle man bygga en förpackning med konsumentvänlig hällanordning. Det var hans bestämda uppfattning att tiden var mogen för det. Ruben blev entusiastisk och ville omedelbart kalla in [Harry Järund](private://read/01jgv3rewabvpzfbhb06r0km4d/#indx-215x) och patentingenjören [Tage Norberg](private://read/01jgv3rewabvpzfbhb06r0km4d/#indx-271x). Harry Järund spelade golf, men Norberg kom. Tillsammans funderade de vidare. De kom till sist fram till att man skulle ha en lös plastpåse som klistrades fast i toppen på kartongen. Där skulle man också ha ett utstansat hål där en plastpip som fungerade som hällanordning skulle stickas in. Rubens entusiasm ökade än mer och han ville att patent skulle sökas fortast möjligt. När Harry Järund kom tillbaka från golfen fick han besked om att han skulle försöka konstruera förpackningen efter anvisningarna."

"Ruben triumphed. More and more cream machines were placed around the country and even one in France. However, they still had no machine that worked for milk. Harry Järund was starting to face problems. Contradictory messages, counter orders, and constantly new decisions complicated his work. Sometimes he was supposed to ensure the construction of a machine that could manufacture half-liter packages. When he had made some progress, the decisions changed to entail deciliter packages for cream. Harry Järund needed peace and quiet, but unfortunately, that was the only thing he did not get. When he finally could begin building a machine, he couldn’t find any suitable paper to use. Since a milk package is larger than a cream package, it creates greater downward pressure in the package. This, in turn, places entirely different demands on the paper."

"When the problem of constructing a machine that could manufacture tetrahedrons came up, Harry Järund, now the work study manager at Åkerlund & Rausing, believed he had the solution. On January 3, 1945, he made a sketch that showed how the machine could work. Through a system of chain-driven clamping jaws, tetrahedrons could be continuously produced from a paper tube. Ruben liked the idea and assigned a group of technicians under the direction of the exiled engineer Dieter Kunckel from Germany to further develop it, despite many within the company questioning Kunckel’s competence for the task. He was a highly qualified engineer but not a mechanical engineer. His expertise was in a completely different area: before his exile, he had designed submarines for the German navy. But Ruben, who was incredibly stubborn once he had made up his mind, did not want to listen to the criticism of Kunckel. Instead, a location was rented at old Väster in Lund. Here, Kunckel and his men would develop Harry Järund’s basic idea."

"On September 5th that year, the first tetra machine was test-driven. Harry Järund had succeeded in his task. His wooden and bicycle chain model would eventually be set up as a monument in the foyer of the Tetra Pak main office. Ruben later explained in various contexts that it was he himself who had the model built, as he was dissatisfied with what the technicians had achieved. In his unpublished memoirs, written much later, Ruben wrote: “The little wooden model that I had made to demonstrate the idea as such is still set up at Tetra Pak.” In other words, Ruben felt like the true inventor of the tetra machine."

"The first generation of employees, Harry Järund, Erik Torudd, Erik Wallenberg, and others, never fully experienced the fruits of their hard labor. They initiated the technology that was later developed and refined by their successors. The sales department, led by Erik Torudd, did a fantastic job in spreading the Tetra system to a large number of countries and contributed to rapid international expansion. During his time as Deputy CEO in charge of sales, Erik Torudd visited over 100 countries. The task of the salespeople was in a way completely hopeless; they were to sell a strangely designed and leaking package that no rational consumer wanted. But they succeeded."

"While Ruben showed great satisfaction in finally having removed Holger from the circle of owners, he was also relieved that he wanted to stay on the board. He knew Holger’s good name meant a lot for the opportunities to take up new loans at Tetra Pak. He therefore quickly wrote to Marcus Wallenberg to inform him about the stock takeover, but also to emphasize that Holger would remain on the board. “A limited cooperation will therefore continue, which I am pleased to see,” he wrote in the letter. With the purchase of Holger’s shares, only one step remained for Ruben before the plan for a family-run empire, with his sons as the sole owners, could be realized: he had to remove the remaining six small owners. Therefore, he soon made deals with Torsten Jeppsson and Erik Wallenberg. They sold their shares at nine times par. Harry Järund, Gunnar Brime, and Erik Torudd, however, resisted the Rausing buyout proposals. None of them wanted to sell at the price Ruben had proposed. Erik Torudd did not want to sell at all. Not at any price."

"Engineer Harry Järund was hired at Åkerlund & Rausing in 1942. Ruben had spotted the talented young man during his work in the industrial commission. At that time, Harry Järund had converted the carpentry department at Jonsereds Fabriker to instead produce 7.5-centimeter shells. The production shift was so successful that Jonsered could, after a short time, sell the cheapest shells to the defense. Ruben, who was always on the lookout for competent men, was quick to notice the achievement. In the summer of 1942, he asked Harry Järund to come to Stockholm for lunch. After the lunch, Järund was employed at Åkerlund & Rausing."

"Ruben, who was now in a hurry to get a machine done, was hooked. It was urgent if they were to get ahead of any competitors with similar plans. Harry Järund was made to sign an agreement committing to deliver a working machine within four months. The company quickly rented a space for him in the worn-down old factory site opposite Lund Central Station."

"Although Harry Järund’s machine was not perfect, it was still a prototype. Ruben seemed relieved. But still, enormous problems remained. There was no material available to coat the paper to make it leak-proof. Wax, which was the usual sealing agent, could not be used as it would break in the folds. It also could not withstand heat sealing; it would melt. Overall, there was no known coating material that would withstand heat sealing without altering the taste of the milk. And if they did succeed in finding an alternative that could be used, how would it be applied to the paper and were there coating machines available? Before the war, Imperial Chemical Industries (ICI) in the UK had developed a low molecular weight polyethylene plastic. It was not suitable for coating a tetrahedron, but Stig Sunner believed that a high molecular weight polyethylene would work well for tetra packaging. Erik Torudd, who was in charge of the commercial part of the material issue, contacted ICI to inquire if they could possibly develop such a plastic. If the trials were successful, ICI would become the sole supplier of polyethylene for milk packaging. This was a very tempting bait. Torudd received an affirmative answer, but with the reservation that it would take time."

"The new one-liter packaging gave Tetra Pak entirely new and unforeseen leakage problems. The difficulty in making them watertight was largely due to the shape of the packaging, a problem that could seem simple at first glance, but in reality, involved advanced structural mechanics. As the tetrahedron looked the way it did, the stress on the lower seam increased nearly exponentially with the larger amount of liquid. Thus, the milk leaked out through this path. Harry Järund managed to find a simple solution; he simply reinforced the seam with a thin polyethylene strip that was affixed over it. Although many have later tried to solve the problem in a more elegant way, it is still Järund’s strip that is used within Tetra Pak."

"Ruben and the Rausing sons believed in Althin’s litanies about the incompetent Harry Järund. Hadn’t the machine program constantly encountered inexplicable delays? And mustn’t it then be Harry Järund’s responsibility? These were some of the questions they asked themselves. But they forgot that they themselves were ultimately responsible for many of the delays on the machine side. Järund often received unclear and conflicting directives from them. Suddenly, he might be ordered to halt the development of machines for a certain package size in favor of prioritizing another size. A few weeks later, complete counter-orders could come. Järund and his technicians were simply not allowed to work in peace. The Rausing family couldn’t keep their fingers out of it, since they all thought that technology was among the most enjoyable things, even though none of them had any competence in the field. Among the technicians in Harry Järund’s department, it was increasingly said about the Rausing family: “It’s progressing, in spite of them.”"

"After returning to Sweden, Erik Torudd continued to advocate for the use of the S-50 and to apply HP Smith’s method to it. Now, it seemed that the winds were changing within the company. The board of Tetra Pak now included Ruben, Gad, Hans, Holger Crafoord, Erik Torudd, and the company’s skilled lawyer, Carl Borgström. When the dark-suited gentlemen gathered for a board meeting on the morning of February 4, 1952, they decided to build a copy of HP Smith’s machine. Erik Torudd and Harry Järund, who was co-opted onto the board, fought hard against the decision. Both thought it was better to either buy a finished machine or drawings. Otherwise, they risked several years being lost to development. Moreover, they thought it was immoral to copy someone else’s work. But they spoke to deaf ears. Tetra would copy the HP Smith machine. Responsible for the project were the technical genius Nils Andersson and Gad. The decision was bold, but entirely legal. Carr Sherman had voluntarily shown them a design that was not yet patented."

"Without Holger Crafoord’s scouting in the USA in the early 1930s where he reported home about a single-use paper packaging for milk, Erik Wallenberg’s crucial invention in 1944 of a milk packaging in paper shaped like a tetrahedron, Erik Torudd’s ideas about continuous filling, and Harry Järund’s filling machine which solved the problem of producing an affordable packaging and which, through the efforts of many employees, led to an aseptic packaging system for milk and other liquid foods, the Rausing family’s mega-fortune would never have occurred. The story also shows the significance an innovation can have for communities, employees, owners, and other stakeholders, and that many of these stakeholders were also involved in the creation of the innovation. It is not entirely easy to go from an ingenious idea to realizing the idea and taking it out in the market and building up a multinational industrial conglomerate that spreads the innovation globally in the world and which is still market-leading after all these years."

"It is quite telling that the Benzon case was not unique in any way. Just a week after Ruben had registered himself as the inventor of the handle, the next story came along. Lennart Liljeblad, who was also an engineer at Harry Järund, had designed a special type of knife that was to be used to cut off the top of the tetra. It was a problem that Ruben himself had tried to solve during a vacation in Sicily. But since he had quite limited technical knowledge, his constructions were accordingly. When Harry Järund then announced that the problem had been solved by Lennart Liljeblad, Ruben did not want to listen. However, just a week later, he applied for a patent on Liljeblad’s knife, naming himself as the inventor."

"When the big day arrived, everything went wrong. Throughout the day and night before, Harry Järund and his engineers had worked hard to get the machine working. But no matter how they tried, not a single complete package came out of it. They decided not to use milk in the packages but plain water. Otherwise, any leakage would be immediately visible. When there was just one hour left before the journalists were to arrive, they still had not succeeded. Finally, they tried changing the paper quality. And succeeded. Now the machine produced whole packages. But even though they were complete, they leaked. If the journalists saw them, the tetra method would be embarrassed before they even started any real production. The situation was desperate."

"“If I think about what they have meant to us - Erik Wallenberg, through his Tetra invention, Gunnar Brime through 27 years of activity in ÅR, Torsten Jeppsson through his devoted, tremendously hard work over many years, Harry Järund through his inventing activities, Stig Sunner through his scientific advising, Erik Torudd for his commitment to Tetra Pak from the very first minute, Göte Engfors through his 20-year, significantly underpaid directorship in our various companies, and Carl Borgström’s exceptionally important advising for our operations - then the price you mention, as far as I can judge, is really not reasonable,” he continued. But Holger never had the chance to carry out his plan to help the remaining small shareholders."

"Boye Benzon, one of the designers at Åkerlund & Rausing, invented a handle that was clamped onto the long side of the tetra where the seal was located. As a result, the tetra could function like a regular jug, only made of paper. Harry Järund believed that the handle was so good that it did not require any further development work. However, when he presented the idea to Ruben, he received no response at all. Ruben could not see anything good about the handle. But a month later, after he had finished contemplating, he wanted the handle to be patented as soon as possible. The strange thing was that in front of Erik Torudd, who was to draft the patent application, he claimed that he himself was the inventor. Torudd, who knew the true circumstances, advised Ruben against it and stated that he wanted nothing to do with the matter."