It’s like a big family at S. Elgin’s Hoffer Plastics

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

SOUTH ELGIN — It’s easy to see why Hoffer Plastics, a custom injection molding company here, won the 2010 Illinois Large Family Business of the Year Award from Loyola University’s Family Business Center.

Receptionist and HR administrative assistant Luanne Slania said she walked into the company 18 years ago looking for a job. She was given a tour of the plant and hired. “I was so fascinated with the tour,” she said, “I asked if I could bring my children in for a tour. They loved it, too.”

Ten of founder Bob and Helen Hoffer’s second- and third-generation descendants work for the firm. Hoffer’s son Bill, current president and CEO, says, “On March 15, 1953, Dad drove two cartons of plastic deodorant sticks to Midway for delivery to his first client. It was his baby. He came to work every day in shirt and tie well into his 80s.”

In 1997, Bob Hoffer was inducted into the Plastic Hall of Fame. At Hoffer’s 360,000-square-foot plant, 91 production presses consume $200,000 worth of electricity and utilities a month, making 3 billion plastic parts annually for clients such as Ford, Kraft and Briggs & Stratton.

Inside the plant, a 14,000-pound solid-steel mold sat on a table next to cake and coffee where Carl Bruzzini’s co-workers gathered to celebrate his 20th anniversary with the firm. “We have 365 employees,” said Charlotte Canning, Bill Hoffer’s daughter and a business development manager for the firm, “so there’s at least one of these a month.” President Hoffer shook Bruzzini’s hand, said he appreciated his years of service, and presented him with an envelope.

Hoffer promotes from within. Eight of nine plant managers started as injection molding machine set-up trainees. Bill Irish, a 28-year Hoffer employee and head of the firm’s five-person engineering staff, said, “Tool- and mold-making is not something you can learn out of a textbook. A lot of it is on-the-job training.”

Canning said the family-owned company’s core values are family, integrity, service and trust. Several years ago, a new customer transferred six molds in to Hoffer on Good Friday. The customer needed parts by Monday to keep his assembly line running. (Injection molding companies make molds for their clients, but clients own the molds and may take them, and their business, elsewhere.) “We worked 24 hours straight through,” Canning said, “from Friday to Monday, to get the job done.”

Packaging is a leading economic indicator, Hoffer said, and business is up this year. The firm, which laid off no one during the recession, welcomed 50 new employees to the Hoffer family in 2010.