Like an excited child flaunting his favorite Christmas toy, Rich Henderson fervently grabs a beef stick from a table to show off Phenix Corporation’s newest food packaging product, CurlGuard.
“This is how most sticks look. You can’t stop these films from curling. It’s the nylon in them,” he says as he bends the ends and then lets go. “These are flat. You just don’t see these. Go look in a gas station. You’re going to be like, ‘Wow, whatever product Rich was holding up is incredible.’”
The Phenix co-founder is referencing the flexible packaging and equipment services provider’s significant growth in recent years. With two buildings in Elberfeld, Indiana, the employee-owned company is developing a third structure for its corporate headquarters and conversion facility. The business expects to complete the 39,000 square-foot project this summer.
“The demand initially drove the first warehouse investment in Elberfeld,” says Nick Henderson, packaging engineer and son of Rich Henderson. “That warehouse is now our engineering headquarters. We have a warehouse triple the size of that right behind it.”
With $49 million in sales in 2025 and a workforce of more than 40 people, Phenix executives are also contemplating a fourth building in Elberfeld.
‘Fanatical About Response’
When Rich, an Indianapolis-area resident, and Florida resident Joe Dobinski founded Phenix in 2010, they didn’t pay themselves so their employees would get paychecks. Rich filed for bankruptcy, while Dobinski used his home as collateral to get their first line of credit.
The men had plastics knowledge, but they spent many nights learning everything they could about food packaging. This rocky period created one of the company’s primary tenets: Fanatical About Response.
“Why were we Fanatical About Response in the beginning?” Rich rhetorically asks. “Because we had to eat. We had to live. We had to pay people. We just got back to people immediately. And we recognized that’s why customers liked us.”
The company began with custom food packaging and printed film solutions and added full-service equipment and technical support around 2015. Today, there are two divisions: Phenix Flexibles and Phenix Engineering.
“A lot of what our service does is that it opens the door to film sales and vice versa,” says Chief Operating Officer Dusty Wilson. “If we have a film customer who needs monthly preventative maintenance programs on their equipment, our service department is outstanding. They’re fast, they’re reliable, and they get the job done properly. So, we’re growing on both sides.”
Rich says Phenix chose to locate its first physical operations in Elberfeld in 2020 because of one of its main clients: the U.S. military. Evansville-based Ameri-Qual Foods is one of the company’s Meals Ready-to-Eat (MRE) assemblers. Nick Henderson, who’s also in Indianapolis, adds that the Warrick County location’s proximity to I-69 and I-64 is ideal for shipping.
“It’s allowed us to better service everyone up north. That’s out all the way out to Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Ohio. We have a big footprint within those states,” he says.
‘Do the Right Thing’
When it comes to Phenix Corporation’s products and services — commercial product packaging, printed packaging, and packaging equipment support and consulting — Rich insists the engineering division is the backbone of the company.
“We turn (the engineers) into salespeople. Because sales isn’t about going and selling anybody something. It’s about being organized and helping customers reach their own goals. You help them, and you’re going to be helping yourselves,” he says.
Besides providing MRE packaging for the military, Phenix’s markets include proteins (such as the aforementioned beef sticks), dairy, produce, snacks, and pet food. Regional customers include Haubstadt-based Dewig Meats and Prime Foods in Boonville, while New York’s Sabra and Georgia’s MANA Nutrition are national customers.
“We deal in food. You don’t make a mistake in food; 99 percent is not good enough. You have to be 100 percent accurate in what you do,” Rich says.
The drive to deliver exceptional customer service led to another tenet for Phenix: Do the Right Thing. Wilson says this pledge is why customers trust the company and keep coming back.
“In the past couple of years, we’ve had 30 percent sales growth, 50 percent sales growth. We’re looking to do another 20 percent sales growth in 2026. The volume is stronger than ever,” he says.
‘We Own It’
Phenix Corporation’s third tenet, We Own It, is a double entendre, according to Rich. Not only does the business take full responsibility for client issues, but the employees literally own the company as of 2025. Rich recalls private inquiries about buying Phenix in the past, but he wasn’t interested.
“We thought, ‘We can cash out with enough to make ourselves happy, but we can also grow this thing to reward all these people, to make a significant difference in everybody’s life — not just their life, but all the people around them,“ he says. “It’s probably a percent that separates everybody, from a forklift operator to the president of the company. Our (Employee Stock Ownership Plan) is a powerful tool, and everybody owns it together.”
Rich estimates 5-7 more employees will join Phenix’s ESOP once the headquarters and conversion facility is operational in Warrick County. For the first time, the company will go beyond supplying films and packaging to customers to also bringing in components and converting them into products.
“We’ll have the capabilities down the road of print and pouch making,” Wilson says. “We’ve got a lot of custom automation that’s going into that facility. So our new headquarters is going to be a nice showpiece of Phenix specialty films.”
Phenix also is planning in May to move out of a warehouse the company has leased since 2021 in Jacksonville, Florida, into a new 26,000-square-foot facility in the same city to support its Southeast market.
“We have a solid footprint, and we’re getting noticed. Anywhere from small mom and pop companies, which we love working with, to the big corporate side,” says Wilson, who works on-site in Elberfeld. “We’re always growing.”
Wilson says Phenix’s future expansion strategy will depend on the projected outcomes for both company and client. “We can jump into smaller niche markets if we want, and we’ll be prepared to make those choices. It’s just, ‘Does it bring value to Phenix? Does it bring value to our customers or potential customers?’” he says. “We’ll never sacrifice what we’re great at. And that’s film.”
