A 60-year-old family-owned packaging company is packing up its Elk Grove Village operation and heading to Elgin, where it plans to triple its floor space and eventually double production. Forest Packaging, which currently runs out of 1955 Estes Ave. in Elk Grove Village, will relocate to an existing 113,464-square-foot building at 1450 Bowes Road, at the northeast corner of Bowes Road and South McLean Boulevard. The move is expected to bring between 44 and 60 jobs to the city.
The Elgin City Council gave unanimous approval on August 26 to the zoning change needed for the relocation, according to the Daily Herald. Forest Packaging specializes in manufacturing corrugated boxes, products and displays, handling everything from design to delivery in-house, and the Bowes Road building offers triple the space of its current Elk Grove Village location. Company president John Kula told the paper he hopes Forest Packaging will be fully operational at the new site by the end of the second quarter of 2027.
The company had already signaled the plan to its own customers earlier in the year. Forest Packaging told customers in a January announcement that it had outgrown its Elk Grove Village facility and intended to relocate to Bowes Road in early 2027 to more than double its production space, noting the move would accommodate new equipment and improve operational efficiency.
A Building With a Different Past Life
The Bowes Road property wasn't built for boxes. It was formerly occupied by TH Foods Inc., a snack food manufacturing company, whose subsidiary Terri Lynn Fundraising ceased operations at the site and sold off all plant machinery through a public online auction in September 2025, conducted by Levy Recovery Group and ZiffCap, per Bidspotter listings. Forest Packaging plans no exterior changes to the building, according to the Daily Herald's reporting, even as it repurposes the space for printing, cutting, folding and gluing corrugated products. The site itself has room to grow: commercial listing records from March 2026 show the property sits on a 7.76-acre parcel with an additional 9.95 acres of surrounding land, and the building contains two separately demised industrial units, according to a listing on Realmo.
Once running, the Elgin facility will operate two shifts, with a first shift from 5 a.m. to 1 p.m. and a second from 5 p.m. to 1 a.m. Kula said he plans to double Forest Packaging's current operations within five to 10 years, and part of that growth strategy leans on the city's home-grown talent pipeline. He told the Daily Herald he hopes to recruit employees from nearby Elgin Community College, which is opening a $28.5 million, 150,000-square-foot Manufacturing and Technology Center in late 2026, bolstered by an additional $2 million in federal funding secured in February 2026 for advanced manufacturing equipment, according to the college.
Filling a Gap Left by a Recent Closure
The timing lands just months after Elgin's packaging workforce took a hit. Flexible packaging manufacturer Printpack announced in December 2025 that it would close its longtime Elgin plant, which it had operated since acquiring the facility in 1978, and lay off 111 workers by April 2026 — a closure Hoodline previously reported in detail. Forest Packaging's arrival won't fully replace those lost positions, but it does mark new packaging-sector hiring in a city still absorbing that blow.
Forest Packaging traces its roots to 1966, when it was founded in Forest Park, Illinois — the source of its name — before growing under two generations of the Kula family at its Elk Grove Village site, according to BW Papersystems. At that facility, the company has produced between 10 million and 15 million square feet of corrugated paper per month, with a diversified customer base in which no single client accounts for more than 10 percent of total revenue. Elk Grove Village itself is home to North America's largest contiguous industrial park, spanning nearly six square miles with more than 3,600 businesses and 400 manufacturers employing roughly 60,000 workers, per the Village of Elk Grove — a hub Forest Packaging is now leaving behind for more room to expand.
Riding a Bigger Wave in Box-Making
Forest Packaging's expansion mirrors a broader industry shift. The U.S. corrugated packaging market was valued at $35.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $42.05 billion by 2031, growing at an annual rate of 2.58%, according to Mordor Intelligence. Much of that growth is tied to e-commerce logistics: U.S. online retailers and third-party logistics providers added more than 50 million square feet of fulfillment space in 2025 alone, fueling demand for custom, right-sized corrugated packaging that helps shippers avoid dimensional-weight penalties charged by carriers, the same market research notes.
For a 60-year-old family business built on printing, cutting, folding and gluing, that national demand curve is now colliding with a very local decision — trading a crowded industrial park next to O'Hare for a standalone building near a community college campus built to train the next generation of factory workers.
