Celebrating 145 years of industry service, the Halsted Corporation is one of the nation’s oldest bag and packaging companies. Started in 1876 as a manufacturing business by E.S. Halsted, the Halsted headquarters was located in downtown Manhattan. For more than 100 years, Halsted specialized in manufacturing bags for all trades – from potato sacks used by local farmers to burlap sandbags found in military bunkers during Vietnam.

In 1927, with the Halsted name growing throughout the industry, Mr. Halsted sensed the need to expand the manufacturing facility. He purchased land in Jersey City, New Jersey, and built the 45,000 square foot factory where Halsted remained until 2016. With the new facility producing more than two thousand bags per hour, a 1929 edition of Bags Magazine named Halsted, “one of the most up to date bag plants in the country.”

In 1944, Mr. Halsted hired Henry Jaszewski as an assistant bookkeeper. Although only a part-time position, Henry managed to form a close relationship with Mr. Halsted and worked his way up the ranks over the next thirty years – to assistant treasurer, vice president, and ultimately president and part-owner. When Mr. Halsted passed away in 1974, Henry assumed sole ownership of Halsted.

Under Henry’s leadership, Halsted expanded nationally, and began servicing packaging distributors outside the New York metropolitan area for the very first time. In 1977, Henry was joined by his son-in-law, Michael Murphy. Recognizing the need to stay competitive in a changing global market, Henry and Michael soon began the practice of importing polypropylene bags from factories overseas. To date, Halsted has trusted manufacturing partners in Bangladesh, India, China, Indonesia, Taiwan, The Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Korea, Mexico, and Cambodia.

In 2006 Halsted opened a west coast warehouse facility, and in 2016, the headquarters moved to a state-of-the-art warehousing facility in Cranbury, New Jersey where it remains today with nearly 150,000 sq. ft of distribution space.