Wallace Williams

Business Development

Mark Williams

President

Peggy Umbel

Customer Service

Mike Smith

Production Manager

Tom Zbell

Process Engineer

Steve Newsome

Operations Mnager

"Paper Doctor"

Letter from Cauthorne Co.

After the changing of the guard at Cauthorne Paper Company in 2018, we had mentioned that any stakeholder in the company would be curious how the leadership transition would play out. Roughly 7 years later, we are proud to show how our hard work has helped to further promote the incredible, well-established brand of Cauthorne Paper. In the last 7 years, we have relied on our core values of Stewardship, Thoughtlessness, and Persistence to make Cauthorne a better company, with quality systems and personnel.

Our reliance on stewardship has been a byproduct of the relentless customer service efforts from our team. Peggy, Wallace, and Mark have worked hard to provide timely and quality products to all our customers. Our goal was to take care of the business we had and build upon it. We are doing that. Steve and Tom have devoted their energy to operational excellence on the plant floor. We have added new equipment and made improvements to most of our older machines. In November 2023, we merged with Triangle Converting and Beveridge Paper out of Durham. Last year was a record year of shipments for “new” Cauthorne.

Systems wise, the company earned ISO 9001 certification in May 2020. We are very proud of the quality management system we established. It has helped us stay focused on continuously improving our business in a variety of ways. Tom Zbell, in his role as Process Improvement Technician, gets most of the credit for developing our QMS. He also has enhanced our safety program and has maintained our FSC certification which is required for some of our customers. The company also implemented PaperSoft software to manage workflow. All these systems help us work smarter and more efficiently as a company.

People wise, we have leveraged the experience of Cauthorne’s senior employees. Unfortunately, we lost Theresa Patrick in November 2021 to cancer. She was an employee of Cauthorne Paper for 45 years. Our former warehouse manager, Dick Doak, retired at the end of 2022. He had worked in the paper industry for over 50 years. Tom captured tribal knowledge from both while they were here and has been doing the same with Steve, who is clearly the company’s MVP when it comes to equipment and converting expertise.

We have added three new employees in the plant, a new truck driver, and a new customer service representative. In July 2023 I joined Cauthorne Paper in Business Development in anticipation of the merger with Triangle Converting/Beveridge Paper. Mark has been wearing a couple of hats since then but has been spending most of his time in the plant helping manage the warehouse, production and shipping.

Looking ahead, I look forward to taking on the challenge of being the next President of Cauthorne Paper. Mark is not retiring just yet, but the plan is to slow down over the next few years prior to retiring. We have hired a new production manager who has over 30 years’ experience managing a paper converting plant. We look forward to the work skills he brings to the table and the impact he can have on our developing workforce and productivity.

Leadership has an endpoint but with persistence, organizations can keep going. That’s the plan. As we like to say here at Cauthorne, “Let’s Roll.”

Wallace Williams

Cauthorne Paper Company Timeline