Durham Box was established in 1989 when, having spent over twenty years working in the corrugated packaging industry, Michael Morris recognised that the time was right to try his hand at running his own business. Having spent his entire career working for the three main players in the corrugated industry, there was no doubting that Michael had a pretty good understanding of how the industry worked.

At the time he had observed that while sourcing large volumes of packaging was both easy and economical, it was not quite so simple for companies or individuals who did not have such a huge requirement for corrugated packaging. Typically someone with a low to moderate requirement for corrugated packaging would have little choice but to approach one of the main manufacturers, and would end up paying a high premium for the required quantity. As well as the expense it was also difficult for the big manufacturers to provide the smaller accounts with a high level of service so reliability could be a problem.

Michael's response was to set up a company and tailor it in such a way that it could serve the 'smaller user'. From the outset the company was a success, and it soon built a solid reputation as a reliable supplier of quality products at a competitive price. Thanks to this reputation, and of course a lot of hard work, Durham Box developed quickly and soon had a broad and substantial customer base.

In the first two years, Durham Box outgrew its original premises leading to the development of a purpose built factory adjacent to the original site, which having undergone two expansions, now stands at 50,000sq ft. In the subsequent years, through a program of progressive investment in plant and machinery, and through the strategic employment of individuals largely from within the packaging industry, Durham Box has continued to grow and prosper.

As a result of this growth, Durham Box now serves a much broader segment of the corrugated packaging market and is now able to compete with the larger manufacturers for significant accounts, regularly fulfilling orders of 10-20,000 units. However, as a company that grew "from the bottom up", Durham Box has always maintained both the desire and the capacity to serve the market on which it was founded, and will continue to see that a significant proportion of its business comes from low volume work.