Altoids packaging has been made in Rockford for over a century

ROCKFORD, Ill. (WTVO) — A Rockford manufacturer that recently celebrated a major milestone is focused on the future.

J.L. Clark has been in business in Rockford for 121 years. It was founded by John Lewis Clark in 1904. The company makes packaging for very popular brands like Altoids which you see at virtually every store you walk into.

Company president Bob Morris took us inside their facility for a look at how their products are made in the Stateline.

“It’s fantastic,” Morris said about what he gets to do each day. ” It’s all about the packaging, and that’s what we do.”

The company employees about 200 team members. They work with many popular brands to make packaging for more than 25 different products.

Morris said the process begins with very large and heavy metal coils loaded onto a especially strong forklift.

“This literally lifts the load up, this massive hydraulic lift, loads it on the spindle, and now we start feeding,” he said while pointing to the machinery used at the beginning of the process.

The metal is trimmed into sheets.

“All the sheets are trimmed and to order, ready for printing, coating, and fabrication,” he said.

The next room is where things start to take shape.

“”C” is for coaters. “P” is for printers. Here’s where everything starts,” he stated.

“So we saw our sheets cut on the other side. They’re loaded on the front of the line here. They get coated, and then printed, and what we’re seeing today is Altoids is running here. See the white coated piece. Now they’re printed first pass. Then the second printing head is right here. Now you can see the two prints, and then it’s going to head into the oven so that it bakes on so that we can form it.”

“Each of the ovens has exhaust vents for fumes from the printing and the coating. We capture all of those in a RCO unit,” he said. “This is really important because we’re working with volatile compounds printing and coating that release fumes into the air. We want to capture all of those so that nothing goes and negatively impacts the environment.”

Next is waxing.

“We finished printing and coating our sheets. We bring them here to these waxers. Waxing acts as a lubricant. We’re about to bend the metal into a package,” he explained.

The facility has an Altoids room where their famous containers are put together.

“Everything is automated,” Morris demonstrated. “You saw the tops being punched and the bottoms being punched. They’re married in the line to put the top and the bottom together. Then you see we have an automated closer.”

The Altoids packaging is then checked and cleared. Once that’s done it’s boxed with the help of a robotic machine.

“The entire process you’ve seen of making Altoids, it culminates here in a shrink-wrapped pallet and we put it on a truck, goes to the warehouse, ready for shipping,” he said. “Everything goes to Chattanooga, Tennessee.”

That’s where the containers are filled with the actual Altoids.

With that, it’s all done. It’s a process for a popular product Morris says many people don’t know is made in the Stateline.

“People don’t know,” Morris said. “It’s fun to share. We’re kind of in that hidden spot in a huge building that nobody’s aware.”

Morris said J.L. Clark has identified many machines that have been in operation for 70-80 years that will need to be replaced. They’ve made room for newer machines to take their place. He said this is an effort to plan for another 100 years in operation, at least.