COMPANY HISTORY

In 1870, a small machine shop located in Green Bay, Wisconsin began manufacturing parts for sawmills and repairing steamboats. David Hudson and Alexander Sharp purchased the shop in 1910 and named the business The Hudson-Sharp Machine Company. Hudson-Sharp expanded and began manufacturing paper mill equipment (including the first napkin folder in the U.S.) and printing presses.

In the early 1940s, the general manager of the Hudson-Sharp business, Sam Campbell was called to serve in the United States Military in World War II. While Campbell was deployed in Europe, he was introduced to wrapped food products. After the war’s conclusion and his return to Hudson-Sharp, he worked to develop a machine to automate the packaging of food items.

Campbell and a team of engineers invented the horizontal flow wrapper and a patent application was filed in 1946, the date to which we trace our beginning. The patent was granted shortly thereafter. The original horizontal flow wrapper in the U.S., the "Campbell Wrapper," was introduced and was quickly adopted throughout the world for the wrapping of candy, chocolates, crackers, cheese, baked goods, and various other food and non-food products. 

Shortly after the initial patent was granted, Sam Campbell and a few close associates purchased the company. Under his ownership, Campbell continued to develop flow wrappers for vacuum packaging cheeses, meats and other products, and received numerous patents for various styles of horizontal flow wrappers.

FMC Corporation acquired Hudson-Sharp in 1956. FMC's Packaging Systems Division continued to develop the flow wrapper product line with the introduction of inverted, dual lane, shrink, and polyethylene wrappers in addition to related product feeding and handling equipment.

In 1994, FMC sold the flow wrapper product line to SASIB. SASIB owned the business through 2000. In January 2001, John Dykema, who had purchased Circle Packaging Machinery, Inc. (manufacturer of 4-sided seal packaging equipment) in 1998 from SASIB, established Campbell Wrapper Corporation to acquire the flow wrapper product line and other affiliated businesses from SASIB. 

The business embarked on upgrading the drive and control technology of the equipment. Additionally, the sanitary and hygienic design of the equipment was significantly improved to ensure food and medical/pharma product integrity and to aid in reducing changeover and the overall cleaning time of the machines. 

The Campbell flow wrapper business has an impressive reputation for building custom-designed, high quality, ruggedly dependable packaging equipment and providing exceptional spare parts and service support for the life of the equipment. Campbell Wrapper Corporation continues to design and develop new products with that mind-set and integrates the latest electronic control technology available. Campbell development work continues including adaptations to run recyclable content, paper, and other sustainable film structures. The organization is staffed with experienced personnel, some with continuous service dating back to the FMC era. 

In 2021, Campbell completed a 35,000 square foot addition to the manufacturing facility, bringing the total space to over 100,000 square feet. In 2023, Campbell completed renovation of the office, R&D, and demonstration areas of the facility. The business is located in De Pere, Wisconsin, a suburb of Green Bay, in the upper Midwest region of the U.S.