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About Us |
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Welcome!
Hood Packaging Corporation, (previously known as "Bonar Packaging")
is a leading North American manufacturer of plastic film and bags,
paper bags, and coated and laminated papers. For over 100 years,
our company has been a market leader in the design and manufacture
of packaging materials.
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A Little Bit Of
History…
Our earliest company records date from the early 1900's. In 1906
Sir George Drummond, the company's first President, merged a
company called The Canada Jute Company (founded in 1882) with
The Dominion Bag Company and became President of the new firm,
called the Canadian Bag Company. We trace our start back to
this operation as the cradle of our North American business. |
Sir George Drummond |
Customer Samples c1937/c1929 |
In Sir George's time, and until the
early 1930's, most processed cereals and grains were sold in bags
made of natural fibre - woven jute and cotton fabric - imported
by boat from Asia and India.
The raw material was received in bales, sewn into long lengths
and rolled up into large rolls that could be more easily handled
for printing and converting into bags. Sample drawings of bag
designs were often produced for customer approval prior to
printing. (At right see two of our customer samples first
produced about 1937 and 1929 respectively.)
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| At the height of its operations, the
Canadian Bag Company operated plants in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg,
Prince Edward Island, Calgary and Vancouver. Because of the way
jute was sold, and the necessity for the company to speculate
in the jute market, partners were gradually added. One partner,
Thomas Bonar & Co. (Canada) Ltd., a UK owned company that had
other interests in jute trading, eventually acquired all of the
company shares in the late 1930's. By then however, textile bags
had started to lose ground to a new technology - bags made out
of paper. Paper bags were strong, less expensive than textile,
and paper could be obtained locally and at more reasonable cost. |
Vancouver Plant c. 1926 |
Winnipeg Head Office c. 1960's |
In the early 1940's the company
now called Thomas Bonar & Co. (Canada) Ltd., and a new American
partner Bonar & Bemis Ltd., had begun manufacturing these new
industrial paper bags.
The earliest bags were made of up to 5 paper plies, from
rolls of paper that were first slit to size, printed,
then formed into tubes and the bottoms sewn across with
cotton thread.
New paper bag manufacturing plants were gradually established
in Vancouver, Burlington and East Angus. As the new partnership
developed, its headquarters was moved from Montreal to Winnipeg
in the late 1950's.
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New technology continued to be
important and the company began experimenting with printing
and converting polyethylene film into bags. We believe the
first commercial plastic bag in Canada (shown at right),
was printed and converted as a trial by our Burlington paper
bag plant in 1949. In 1953 the company started a specialty
product division, adding a few pieces of equipment in the
Vancouver plant to make plastic bags and paper bags with
cellophane windows.
Following some early success with very basic equipment
and an early flexographic press, the company decided to
expand its plastic film and bag business and added extrusion
and fine-weld bag-forming equipment to a plant
in Montreal. |
First Commercial Plastic Bag c.1949 |
Calgary Plastic Bag Plant c.1960's |
Demand for plastic film and
bags continued to grow and the company added plastic extrusion
and converting equipment. Finally, in the 1960's new plants
that could be devoted solely to plastic film and bags were
built, first in Burlington, and
then later, in Calgary.
As a result of the expansion that had taken place in
Ontario the company headquarters was relocated again,
this time from Winnipeg to Burlington where the company's
first dedicated headquarters office building was built
in 1972. |
First known as Bonar Packaging in
1974, the company continued to build manufacturing plants.
A new facility in Guelph was built in 1974 to produce small
paper bags. The growth of small paper and twist-tie bags
and consumer packaging permitted the plant eventually to
add 8 colour flexographic presses for high quality print supply.
Another larger plant was constructed in Calgary in
1976 to manufacture paper bags. The paper and plastic
operations of other plants were also expanded, with
modern printing, extrusion and higher speed converting
equipment.
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Bonar/Bemis Trucks c.1970's |
Pack-Ex Show 1975
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Sales became the company focus in
the 1970's - a time of product growth. Many new, innovative
products and materials were developed that formed the basis
for later products such as "batch" bags, high barrier films,
high tensile strength paper bags, form fill and seal tubing,
degradable plastics and specialty bag closures and handles.
And, with our emphasis on sales and these new products, another
change in our partnership in the 1980's finally permitted the
company to enter new territories and markets. |
Sales growth in the 80's was rapid,
particularly in the USA. This growth led to further expansion
in 1986 through the acquisition of an industrial plastic bag
and film plant in Tyler, Texas. In the early 80's high speed
coating equipment was also acquired in Calgary, opening up a
new marketplace for the company in paper coating and laminating.
Finally, given such rapid development, the company decided to
go public and for ten years beginning in 1985 the company was
traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange as "Bonar Inc."
In 2000, our ownership was transferred to the Hood
Group of Companies, a privately owned group in
construction and packaging, including an industrial
bag manufacturer, then called Southern Bag Company. |
Tyler, Texas Plant c.1986 |
Hood Packaging Corporate, Headquarters
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Our new relationship with the Hood Group of Companies has given us
a stronger presence in the North American marketplace where we continue
to develop products and customer relationships and to broaden our
product base in industrial packaging - developing and directing our
skills for the benefit of customers.
** NEW **
The evolution now continues as we have just grown by 2 more plants with our purchase of
Glopak on Oct 16, 2006. Glopak is a leader in the food packaging industry. With the added expertise
of Glopak, as a manufacturer of plastic film, bags and filling equipment, Hood can now extend the
value we can supply to you for your Paper, Plastic, coated materials and filling equipment needs.
Whether you are a new employee, a customer, or a supplier of services
or products; whether you're just starting out, or can match our over
100 years of service; whether it's your first visit, or you are a
familiar face - we want you to know, you are welcome at Hood!
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