I have just got back from Lund in Sweden having met Dennis Jönsson, CEO of Tetra Pak.

The Tetra Pak story is an incredible one. The original idea is so beautifully simple. Take a vertical tube of card and bond it horizontally in two locations one above the other, but rotated by 90°, and you create a tetrahedron - a 3d triangular form. This elegant solution has developed into one of the most ubiquitous everyday products on the planet.

I met with Dennis in their sample room, a triangular room lined with 3000 examples of the most recent Tetra Pak product range each carrying the brand of their clients products - milk, juices of all kinds, smoothies, food, wine and even a whiskey! It made for a wild backdrop to the discussion with an amazing array of colours.

What stood out for me was the clarity of the vision, from Ruben Rausing's original concept developed just after the Second World War, to the way every part of the business operates today. Tetra Pak is not a publicly quoted company, instead, it remains a family owned business. Dennis saw this as means by which the original vision and values of the company remain intact. Describing the company structure as a flat one, Dennis went on to say that this meant that every member of the Tetra Pak staff feel able to contribute. While many companies talk this kind of talk, I came away convinced that Tetra Pak actually walk their talk.

What was really reassuring to hear was how, in the first 20 years of the company's development, they had what he described as a negative cash flow. However, because of the commitment of the founder to the vision and the family’s continued support and investment, they went on to grow a 9 bn euro business that, even in the teeth of this recession, is still growing.

Dennis took me on a tour of the original Tetra Pak factory. The line starts with 3 tonne rolls of card being fed into a printing machine at a rate of 6m per second! Not only is the card printed, but it is also creased ready for the Tetra Pak origami that follows. The card is then lined with various foils and a super thin layer of aluminium and sent off to their clients' facilities where yet more Tetra Pak machines fill and fold the card into the containers we use every day in our homes.

It was interesting to try and draw out the lessons ModCell might learn from my meeting with Dennis and seeing the Tetra Pak approach. Two things came to the fore. The first, was that ModCell is about delivering renewable materials into the construction market at scales that haven't been done before. The way ModCell is going to try and do this is by developing a way of packaging these materials into a system that the industry can readily use. The second, and more significant, was that Dennis was absolutely certain that it will be the clarity of ModCell’s vision, and the values that underpin it, that will drive the business forward.

This is one of the most important things I think I have learnt through this journey. I had assumed that to scale the ModCell system up to the aspiration set out in the business plan would require compromise, or at least a dilution of the vision and its values. I know now that the vision and our values will help us find the right partners to work with and deliver a sustainable outcome that's good for business, people and planet.