Proprietary closures bring sustained growth to Hoffer Plastics

South Elgin, Ill. — The seed for Hoffer Plastics Corp.'s recent growth was planted more than a decade ago — even before the company won the Plastics News Processor of the Year award in 2012 — according to Alex Hoffer.

"To be able to tell the whole story, we have to go back to a conference room in 2009, when we were doing strategic planning, because we recognized at the time that we had a customer — and they're still one of our largest customers, and we love them dearly — that too much of our business was coming from," Alex Hoffer said.

"So the question that the group asked was, 'What happens if they went away?'"

The strategic answer to that question was to develop a proprietary product. The move marked a big departure from Hoffer Plastics' roots in custom injection molding.

"For a long, long time, we did not want to be design responsible," William Hoffer said. But the family-owned molder had the talent on staff to develop a product, plus strong relationships with customers, suppliers and design engineers that would prove essential to making it happen.

The result was a line of closures for flexible pouch packaging called Trust-T-Lok that met a need in the food and beverage industry. Trust-T-Lok offered brand owners seal integrity and tamper evidence, and it met choke-proof requirements for children and toddlers. It was compatible with producers' existing equipment, and Hoffer could offer it in a variety of shapes, colors and materials, depending on the customer.

"At the beginning of Trust-T-Lok, we had to get the specs, we had to understand the quality requirements, and we had to know all of the regulations relative to tamper evidence and childproofing and all that," William Hoffer said.

He remembers it as a fun project that fit well in the company's culture of putting service first.

Trust-T-Lok has since spawned a family of proprietary closures that includes the Drop-Lok line of single-motion, twist-off closures for both rigid and flexible packaging. Proprietary closures are now a major part of Hoffer Plastics' business.

That's saying a lot because the company, which has one injection molding plant in South Elgin, has estimated sales of $90 million according to PN data. And development of the Lok line of closures also helped Hoffer Plastics win the 2022 PN Sustained Excellence award.

The Sustained Excellence award is given exclusively to previous Processor of the Year winners. Companies are judged on three criteria: financial excellence, one extraordinary new development since winning Processor of the Year and one key person who has remained at the company and plays a key role.

Financially, the family-owned company has been consistently profitable and shown steady growth since 2012. The Lok family of closures qualifies as the company's extraordinary new development.

And the "one key person" is actually an entire family.

Hoffer Plastics will celebrate its 70th anniversary this month. Robert A. Hoffer Sr., a member of the Plastics Hall of Fame, founded the injection molder in 1953. His son William Hoffer, who was president when the company was named Processor of the Year, is now the chairman.

Over the past 10 years, William Hoffer has increasingly given his three children — Gretchen Hoffer Farb, Charlotte Hoffer Canning and Alex Hoffer — greater responsibility, with a goal of a successful leadership transition to a third generation of family ownership.

In January 2020, just before the world was hit by the coronavirus pandemic, William Hoffer officially passed the baton to the trio, who are dubbed "G3." Alex is chief revenue officer, Gretchen is chief financial officer and Charlotte is chief marketing and communications officer.

COVID-19 aside, the group faced many challenges. From the beginning, they agreed that no one would hold a higher title or role than the others and that they would make all key decisions by consensus. They also had to earn the trust and respect of Hoffer Plastics' 350 employees, most of whom had worked under their father's leadership for many years.

William Hoffer remembers going through the same transition decades earlier, when he and his brother Robert Jr. took over from their father.

"I smile because my brother and I went through exactly this. People out there looking and thinking, 'I hope your dad stays involved because God help us when you two start making decisions,'" he joked. "But that's only natural."

The G3 team, citing their dad's example, made employee health and economic security top priorities. Hoffer Plastics remained fully operational throughout the pandemic with no layoffs. The company pivoted to making personal protective equipment and other COVID-related products that were in high demand, such as hand sanitizer pumps.

"We were very fortunate in that a good chunk of our customers, especially in the packaging area, didn't see business go down; they went up," William Hoffer said.

Hoffer Plastics stayed open and busy, and it did not take any government loans, Farb said.

"We didn't need to because we have decades of fiscal responsibility," she said. "We put practices in place to manage cash on a daily basis, to watch what we were doing. We all gathered as a team to figure out how to save jobs, how to serve customers."

Hoffer Plastics has a solid reputation in the Chicago area — and the plastics industry — as a stable, growing company that treats employees like family. Canning said G3 is committed to upholding that culture.

"We just took an engagement survey, and the largest feedback we got was 'please do not sell; we want the family in the company,'" Canning said. So G3 is managing the company with an eventual transition to the next generation in mind.

"That's certainly the goal, to manage and steward this company in a way that gives an opportunity to anyone in G4 who's interested in continuing," she said.

Hoffer Plastics has always been in South Elgin — Robert Hoffer's wife, Helen, was from Elgin. Its roots in the community are deep.

The future could include expansion, possibly via acquisition.

"I would say the right opportunity hasn't presented itself yet," Alex Hoffer said.

Hoffer Plastics is the fifth company to win the PN Sustained Excellence award, following Plastic Components Inc. of Germantown, Wis., in 2014; GW Plastics Inc. of Bethel, Vt., in 2015; Plastikos Inc. of Erie, Pa., in 2016; and Innovative Injection Technologies Inc. (i2tech) of West Des Moines, Iowa, in 2019.