Pearson, a longtime West Plains-based maker of packaging machinery, says that after investing heavily in product development in recent years, it's now looking at ways to market those products aggressively as it seeks to grow in a sluggish economy.

Pearson has weathered plenty of changes in its industry over the past 53 years. A few years ago, it decided that to stay ahead of the pack, it needed to revamp its operating procedures and pour money into engineering new products. Now, armed with those products and a lean-manufacturing philosophy, the company is ready to expand its presence in the highly-competitive packaging-industry.

"This has been a long-term play," says Michael Senske, the company's president and CEO. "We've built the foundation with these new products to drive growth, and now it will depend on how-we market them."

Pearson had revenue of nearly $30 million last year, up from $27 million in 2006, Senske says. Due to the softening economy, though, which is. putting the brakes on some of its customers' plans to invest in new equipment, the company is expecting fairly flat growth this year, he says. Part of the company's long-term growth strategy involves taking market share away from its competitors and acquiring smaller packaging companies, he says. It's currently in acquisition talks with two companies, Senske says, but he declines for now to disclose further details.

Senske expects the company's revenue growth will pick up again in 2009. Secondary packaging, or packaging items that already have been bottled, canned, or put in boxes, is a mature industry, with machinery makers' annual revenue growth falling mostly in the range of 2 percent to 4 percent, he says.

"As long as we have levels of growth above the industry average, and as. long as we're taking market share, we'll be happy with our growth," Senske says. "We have no debt, we have a healthy balance sheet, and we've invested in products and infrastructure in ways many of our competitors haven't, so we expect we'll come out in better shape than them" once the economy improves.

Pearson designs and assembles packaging equipment for big-name companies in the beverage, food, chemical, personal care, and general manufacturing and distribution industries. Its customers include Tyson Foods, Frito Lay, Coors, Coca-Cola, Anheuser-Busch, Procter & Gamble, and Pepsi.

Nearly all of Pearson's machinery is designed to erect, pack, and seal product cases made of corrugated fiberboard, which the company's machinery typically makes from cut, flat sheets of the material.

Pearson makes about 30 different machines within six main product lines, a "huge percentage" of which are ones it didn't make three years ago, Senske says. Pearson, which fell behind the curve in terms of product development during the 1990s, has plowed more money into new products in the past five years than in the previous 15, he says. It still plans to introduce new products at a rate of one or two new machines a year, he says.

One of Pearson's newest products, the VersaPack Handpack System, which it launched last week, is expected to provide a big revenue boost to the company, Senske says. The system, which includes a case erector, case sealer, and manual pack station where workers fill containers, serves a market Pearson hasn't penetrated yet, he says. It produces 15 cases a minute, which is a slower speed than many of the machines that Pearson makes.

Over the past 18 months, customers increasingly have become interested in buying complete end-of-line packaging systems, Senske says. In the past, customers were satisfied with buying equipment such as case erectors and case sealers from different vendors, but now many of them don't have the time or resources to deal with multiple vendors, he says.

Pearson is taking advantage of that trend by providing total systems, even if it has to acquire some of the equipment from other manufacturers, he says.

Pearson is seeking to keep up with the rapidly changing demands of its customers by designing new machines that are more flexible, easier to operate, and able to handle a larger variety of products, he says. One of its newer products is a large robotic arm that packs containers. The company buys the arm from other manufacturers, designs the end-of-arm tooling necessary to accomplish specific tasks, programs the robotic arms, and sells them for use with its packaging machines.