Janesville's Prent Isn't About To Pack It In

By Jim Leute
Gazette Staff

Quick, name the company that's the largest maker of packages for the medical industry .

If you're correct, you've also named the company that's quickly moving to become the biggest producer of plastic packages for the electronics industry.

The answer is the Janesville-based Prent Corp. , which has no plans to leave the community in which it started 39 years ago. In fact, Prent's Janesville operation is at the heart of the company's growth, said President and CEO Joe Pregont.

Prent is a worldwide manufacturer of plastic thermoforming for custom packaging of blisters, plastic trays and clamshell packaging. It specializes in semi-rigid plastic packaging to be used for medical, electronic, consumer and industrial packaging.

The company employs about 350 people across two shifts at its 178,000-square-foot plant on Kennedy Road in Janesville. Plants in Flagstaff, Ariz., Singapore, Malaysia, China and Puerto Rico push the employment number well above 1,000.

Prent is averaging annual sales growth of 15 percent, Pregont said. This year, that number is closer to 30 percent.

"We're a small company playing in a global market," he said. "Our customers are all industry titans … the Microsofts, Apples and an A-list of players."

Most of Prent's business still emanates from Janesville , which Pregont said is the company's center of best practices that fuels the thermoforming and tooling technology used in its other plants.

The company is unique in that it makes its own thermoforming equipment, an expensive practice but one that gives the company control over the quality standards that drive success in the precision-driven industry where production cleanliness is vital.

"Building our own machinery, plus our tooling capacity puts us on the leading edge," Pregont said. "That, plus or production capabilities and our clean rooms give us something that no one else has.

"We're as high-tech, probably more so, than anyone else in the area."

About 80 percent of Prent's U.S. business is producing plastic packing for the medical industry. In Asian markets, it's reversed: About 80 percent is packaging for electronic devices such as computer components.

Roughly 20 percent of Prent's business is international, a number Pregont hopes to see approach 50 percent. But an increase in offshore business needn't worry local workers, he said.

"We're chasing our customers, while still working to grow our U.S. business," Pregont said of the company started by his father 39 years ago.

"We're doing things we never thought would be possible."

This month's opening of the Prent plant in Puerto Rico is an example.

Thanks to a raft of incentives, the U.S. territory is heavily involved in the medical industry, with packaging a natural component, Pregont said.

"There are other thermoformers in Puerto Rico, but given the way we do things, it's a natural for us," he said.

Prent's facility in Arizona was a vehicle to enter the lucrative California and Mexico markets, he said.

The company, which has won a number of industry awards for packaging, has strategic alliances in Europe and is looking at further expansions in the East Coast and Northwest markets in the United States, Pregont said.

But none of that would be possible without Prent's base in Wisconsin.

Wisconsin is at the heart of the nation's thermoforming industry. Nearly 20 percent of all U.S. sales of thermoform parts originate within a 250-mile radius of UW-Platteville, according to Majid Tabrizi, director of the Center for Plastics Processing Technology at the university.

In fact, the plastic industry is Wisconsin's fourth largest . Since 1992, the state has led the national sector with annual growth of about 8 percent. The state has more than 650 plastics and plastics-related companies and 54,000 jobs, according to Forward Wisconsin .

"Thermoforming had always been looked down upon," Pregont said. "But the Midwest developed as a place for the plastic industry when it became a new material application for the auto industry.

"We went from sheet metal stamping to plastics, and the Rust Belt turned to plastics."

And that's resulted in solid growth for the Janesville company, which recently had 250 people show up for a job fair for 50 open positions.

"We're difficult to work for," Pregont said. "We require drug testing, a lot of math and English skills."

Prent recently donated $10,000 to UW-Platteville for the purchase of a state-of-the-art roll-fed thermoformer. The gift will enhance the opportunities for students in the plastics technology program, a fully accredited major in the Department of Industrial Studies.

That kind of gift is critical to Prent's future, Pregont said.

"We need to support the initiatives of our manufacturing, design and engineering universities to ensure a future stream of knowledgeable students and a qualified workforce," he said.

The company is also a strong supporter of UW-Stout's packaging engineering program. Prent offers internships to students and hosts plant tours and trips to packaging exhibitions.

Prent will also be offering scholarships at Blackhawk Technical College.

"We're competing with the 3Ms of the world for the good people coming out of these schools," Pregont said. "We're showing these schools that this is a great place to be, a great place to work."