The original "Mount Forest Basket Factory" took up shop in the old Mount Forest Carriage Factory building, which had sat empty since the early 1900's when the invention of the automobile dried business up. It had three floors and only a couple loading docks, very different from modern facilities. In 1935 the old carriage factory was purchased for $1.00, and we were off to the races!
We began with making only wooden baskets packaging wise. Mount Forest was a perfect home as it was close to lots of trees that we needed for our raw materials (as the town name would suggest!). Rumour is our facility was also where hockey sticks for the Toronto Maple Leafs were made, using the same trees that were used to make baskets.
In 1952, Ken Hincks started in production, and eventually into sales, then purchased the company in 1972. Ken was the first of 3 generations of Hincks' to work in the business - Ken's sons Paul and Peter joined in the early 80's and are the current owners and operators. Adam is gen-3 and joined in 2017. We like to think our family structure and ownership reflects many of the family-run farms we serve today.
Starting in the 1970's cardboard became more popular and we started forming and gluing boxes and baskets as part of our lineup. Many new basket sizes were introduced over this time, and we expanded our offering to match what growers were looking for. We continue to make baskets and boxes here and cardboard is now our most used raw material.
In 1984 we built and moved in to our current facility in Mount Forest, with roughly 45,000 sq ft to handle the bulk of our manufacturing operations. We ship all across the country right from here, and are proud of our deep roots in the community.
In the early 2000's we brought plastic manufacturing in-house with our first injection molding machine. We make the ever-present green plastic litre here in Mount Forest, along with plastic basket handles and other items.
We've had many name changes over our long history - Mount Forest Basket Factory, Tregunno Veneers, Wood Wellington, and Wellington Wood Products. In 2018, we changed our name to Wellington Produce Packaging to reflect our transformation into a one-stop shop for all types of produce packaging.
