Ruben Rausing

"Ruben Rausing was far from alone in his skepticism. Erik Torudd saw the tetrahedron for the first time a few days later. He became thoughtful. He has described the event as “a shock.” The package looked like nothing else – not round and not square. And how would one be able to fill it? It was made in one piece. Erik Wallenberg was alone in understanding during the first week that he had really constructed a package that would work. That the little quirky package would lay the foundation for the Rausing family’s entry into the very exclusive circle of billionaires, no one realized. Not even the inventor himself, Erik Wallenberg."

"His dynastic building led to him becoming the patriarch Ruben Rausing, the man whose words no one within the family dared to question. He was simply one of Sweden’s last true capitalists. Capitalist in the sense that the capital created was reinvested in the business to in turn generate even more innovations and capital."

"In Ruben Rausing’s case, it was about ensuring that his own family retained control at all times. In some cases, he failed, but in the long term, he succeeded. His strategy was to turn the family into an industrial dynasty while being obsessed with solving problems or improving old solutions. But his overriding concern was his dynastic ambitions."

"The most likely explanation, however, is quite simple: after all the years in the shadow of his younger brother, Gad finally wanted to step forward as the main figure and personify the Tetra Group. A person close to the family firmly claimed that Gad was very happy and pleased with his new role as the figurehead of the company. In some way, it seems to serve as a confirmation that he is what he has always wanted to be: a major industrialist. The competition with Ruben ended in a draw. Five years after buying out his brother, Gad Rausing passed away on January 28, 2000. He was buried in Lund. A few years later, in 2003, the brothers’ brother, Sven Rausing also passed away."

"Although Ruben Rausing liked it when employees dared to think in new ways, he did not always accept their ideas. It often took time before he could approve them. But once he had finished pondering and embraced the ideas, he often presented them as his own or as his family’s. The same happened with the tetrahedron: after Torudd had told him about how the filling problem could be solved, it took a few weeks before Rausing had finished thinking and definitively realized that the tetrahedron was worth a try."

"When he invited his Deputy CEO, Holger Crafoord, to lunch at the house on Tomegapsgatan, he still was not convinced. Now he wanted to hear what he thought about the tetrahedron’s possibilities. But at the lunch, it was instead Ruben Rausing’s wife, Lisa, who said the liberating words. She suggested exactly the same thing as Erik Torudd had done. But her husband still resisted. “It’s not possible. You cannot seal the packages straight through the milk without it taking on taste,” he objected. “Have you tried?” asked Lisa Rausing."

"People often find it difficult to accept new inventions, simply because human capacity to think in new ways is limited. Therefore, Wallenberg also encountered skepticism when he showed what he had come up with. Even Ruben Rausing, who had “think differently” as one of his mottos, had a hard time embracing the little ingenious invention. A few days later, when he asked Erik Wallenberg to come up and show how things were going with the milk packages, Wallenberg placed a number of tetrahedrons on a tray and went up."

"This is the story of a remarkable man, a family dynasty, and a company. Ruben Rausing did something that should have been impossible: starting and maintaining control over a company that became a world leader in its industry without any initial capital. And not only that: in the end, the Rausing family held one of the world’s largest private fortunes. Thus, this book is also about money, power, and influence. It can also be seen as an almost 90-year-long innovation process that continues today."

"Now, there was both a concrete packaging and an idea of how it could be filled. Rausing was convinced that they had found a superior solution for how milk should be packaged. He realized that the packaging could become a mass product that could be manufactured in gigantic quantities. If he just played his cards right, the royalty income from the production would be enormous. Ruben Rausing had sometimes played with the idea of making the family into an industrial dynasty of the same kind as the Wallenbergs. But so far, realism had held back his dreams. The milk packaging, on the other hand, made his imagination take off again. But for the dream to come true, all patents had to be written to him. Therefore, Erik Wallenberg transferred the ownership of the tetrahedron patent to Ruben Rausing in December that year."

"When laboratory experiments showed that it was possible to seal the paper with heat without affecting the taste of milk, Rausing wanted Erik Torudd’s continuous filling to be patented immediately. However, he bypassed Erik Torudd, who was the inventor. Instead, he contacted Tage Nilsson at AW Andersson. Since he was completely non-technical, it was Nilsson who had to make the drawings for the patent application that was filed in August. Ruben Rausing himself was listed as the inventor."

"As the tetrahedron later succeeded globally, various myths about its origin developed: one of them is that it was merely by chance that Wallenberg came up with the solution, since he was actually just playing with some paper while he was home in a feverish delirium. Rausing himself told this story in various contexts. Another version of the story is that Ruben Rausing himself came up with the tetrahedron when he saw his wife stuffing sausages. He also started referring to the tetrahedron as “his patent,” which was correct but gave a misleading impression that he had invented it himself. And Torudd’s idea of continuous filling, he attributed to his wife."

"However, the question remains whether Ruben Rausing’s motto that: “A proper packaging saves more than it costs” should also form the basis for Tetra Pak and the current generation of Rausing in a more sustainable circular economy. It is worth pointing out that especially the aseptic packages with long durability, without the need for the products to be refrigerated, have fundamentally been a sustainable packaging system compared to many other packaging alternatives. The major climate benefits have been the minimization of packaging materials and the reduction of waste of food raw materials. At the same time, the aseptic products can have a shelf life of up to a year without needing to be refrigerated, which in turn leads to major energy savings in the distribution chain. Tetra Pak’s packaging solution also emits less carbon dioxide than the alternatives of plastic and glass packaging. However, it cannot be claimed that this will suffice for the sustainable packaging solutions of the future."

"In an interview conducted with Ruben Rausing in his later years, he stated that it would be impossible to create a global industrial company such as Tetra Pak in today’s corporate environment. Then one might need to remind about his wife Elisabeth’s words when Ruben himself doubted the tetrahedron’s potential as a packaging solution: “Have you tried?”"

"The situation was grim and it seemed that the only thing that could save Tetra Pak was to borrow more capital. It was Ruben who in March 1971 was tasked with going to Stockholm and talking to his friends in the Wallenberg family to try to get new credits from Enskilda Banken. But once in Stockholm, he was immediately disappointed. His old friend Marcus did not even receive him. He believed that as chairman of the board, he should not interfere in the daily management of the bank. Ruben had to settle for “just” meeting the bank’s CEO, Marcus’s oldest son, Marc. Ruben took it as a personal insult that he did not get to meet the head of the finance family. It was as if they treated him like just any zero and not the great industrialist Ruben Rausing. He was no less offended that Marc refused to lend him the ten million kronor that the company needed."

"At this stage, when his wife had said the decisive words, Ruben Rausing decided to bet everything on the development of the tetrahedron. Suddenly he was almost manically charmed by the idea. It is no exaggeration to say that he nearly became obsessed with the idea of the tetrahedron."

"Ruben Rausing had the Wallenberg family as his role model in building his dynasty."