Top Entrepreneurs: CEO Charles Murray succeeds by focusing on what's aheadAn inventor and entrepreneur with more than 100 patents, Charles Murray has built a successful company that has filled a variety of needs for businesses and consumers around the world.

by: Grier Ferguson Sarasota-Manatee Editor
www.businessobserverfl.com

 

Look around the corner.

That’s what PPi Technologies Group CEO R. Charles Murray says is his favorite expression. “I’m always trying to be worrying about what’s coming up,” he says.

Murray’s eye on the future has helped the Sarasota-based company succeed and grow in recent years to a firm with 80 employees and $46.4 million in revenue in 2019. It has grown almost every year, and in the past decade revenue is up 170%, from $17 million in 2010.

The company sells packaging machinery and is an industry leader in stand-up pouch packaging. It also offers several consumer products, ranging from alcoholic beverages to wellness items, and provides contract packing services. Each of the 18 rooms at the 110,000-square-foot facility in the Northgate industrial park, north of downtown Sarasota, is dedicated to its own product. The company also owns two other properties.

Today, with 75-year-old Murray at the helm, the diverse company is focused on innovation and consumer needs, always with an eye to the future. That approach has paid dividends for the company, including during the coronavirus crisis. In some ways, the company was better positioned for the pandemic than others because Murray shrewdly anticipated demand.

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