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…