July 2004
Aldelano Takes Contract Packaging
to a New Level
Serving Fortune 500 companies, Aldelano South Los Angeles has five packaging
plants nationwide.
If you’ve ever gone to a club or warehouse store and loaded up on cereal, laundry detergent, snack foods or a myriad of other food and household products, there’s a good chance it was packaged at one of Aldelano Packaging Corp.’s facilities.
Aldelano is one of the nation’s leading contract packaging companies with a customer roster that includes Kellogg, Procter & Gamble and General Mills, makers of such well-known brands as Pop Tarts, Pringles, Tide, and Cheerios.
With operations in five states -- Grand Rapids, Mich.; Jackson, Tenn.; Lima, Ohio; Albany, Ga., and Chino, Calif. -- the company with its 1,000 employees offers contract packaging services, which include shrink wrapping, assembly, “kitting,” re-packaging, display building; packaging materials, such as corrugated boxes, folding cartons, shrink and stretch films and more; and warehousing and distribution.
Contract packaging companies like Aldelano are often hired by product manufacturers when there are limited production facilities and concerns about equipment investments, physical facilities, personnel training and more.
“We’re problem solvers,” says Al Hollingsworth, Aldelano’s president and chief executive officer, who founded the company when he was 23 years old and has made it the multi-million dollar business it is today. “We’re known across the country for taking on tough packaging and distribution-management challenges and finding ways to meet them – promptly, creatively, and cost-effectively.
“No job is too big for the company,” he adds. “We can provide all or part of the labor, equipment, and materials for our customers. We can go on-site to a customer’s facilities, or set up shop within 15 miles of where they are. We call it our ‘to-your-door-service’ program.”
By the time Hollingsworth founded the company in 1968, he had a psychology and speech pathology degree from the University of Colorado and a few years of paper industry experience under his belt working for Crown Zellerbach and the Fiber Board Company.
“In my first job at Crown Zellerbach’s Gaylord Division, I learned the paper manufacturing process, from beginning to end. I also got a sales opportunity with Fiber Board,” he says.
When Hollingsworth started his new company in South Central Los Angeles, he called it “The Sheet Plant Corp.” The company’s focus was on converting sheets of paper into boxes. However, he later realized there was little profit in that business so he started to offer packaging services.
“We saw an emerging need for packaging damaged goods into new boxes. The competition was so strong that we began to offer repackaging and more value-added services to capture more of the business,” he says, adding that he eventually closed the Los Angeles facility and started operations in other states to be near his customers.
In 1980, Hollingsworth changed the company name to Aldelano, a combination of his first and middle names, Alfred Delano. With the emergence of club and discount stores, such as Sam's Club and Costco, the demand for special packaging services grew, and Aldelano soon became a contract packaging leader.
“We were at the hub of that [retail] expansion. We were providing those services to Fortune 500 companies that were not traditionally staffed and trained in repackaging. The demand for these new markets gave us a great opportunity to grow our business around the country.”
Hollingsworth, who works out of the company’s Chino, Calif., facility, says the company became known as a contract packager that could set up facilities anywhere in the U.S. within a short time frame.
“We could set up a plant with a full supply chain outsourcing – with staffing, warehouse and equipment – and offer to-your-door service anywhere in the U.S. We became familiar with quick start-up systems. That’s the value we brought to our customers,” he says, adding that his customers couldn’t do the jobs in-house with the speed or cost-effectiveness of Aldelano’s operations.
Aldelano has served Procter & Gamble for 26 years, Kellogg’s for 16 years, and General Mills for eight years, and is involved with numerous other co-partnerships. The company’s growth strategy is to continue to create partnerships and expand its services.
Earlier this year, Aldelano’s request for Foreign Trade Zone status was granted. According to Hollingsworth, this offers a host of benefits to companies that import goods and products into the U.S., but the biggest advantage is the money that this new status saves Aldelano’s customers.
“A Foreign Trade Zone is a secured area within the U.S. where merchandise can be admitted without the immediate payment of customs duties or excise tax. We can not only offer customers reliable contract packaging services, but also our Foreign Trade Zone status means greater cost savings for our customers,” he says.
During his career, Hollingsworth made time to be involved with other numerous activities. He served as Economic Development Commissioner for the state of California, and co-founder, president and board member of the Black Business Assn., and currently serves on the board of the men’s ministry, Promise Keepers. He and his wife, Hattie, also founded two Christian-based organizations – BOSS (Building on Spiritual Substance) the Movement and Vertical Leap -- to help young people and adults develop leadership skills, self-esteem and self-confidence.
Of his company’s success, Hollingsworth says, “We’re continually changing and moving because our industry is always fluid. Pressure brings out the best in those that are best designed to respond to opportunity. We thrive under pressure because it forces us to become more creative. We respond very well to those opportunities.”
