Leidel Corporation History, 1902-present

In 1902, Fritz Wacker opened a stamping business, known as Fred Wacker, in lower Manhattan, stamping precious metals for the jewelry industry. In the following years, William Leidel Sr. joined the business, which was soon expanded to include tool and die making. Upon Fritz’s death in 1915 William Leidel Sr. assumed responsibility for the company.

In 1936, the company moved to Long Island City, was renamed the Wacker company, and William Sr.’s son, William Jr., Became a partner. In 1953, facing bankruptcy, William Sr. retired, leaving William Jr. to run the business.

In 1956, the company was incorporated under the name of Leidel Corporation. In the 1960’s William Jr’s three oldest sons (William, Warren, and Roger) joined the business. In 1965 the company moved to its present location on Long Island, in Farmingdale, NY. The Farmingdale facility is 14,000 ft2.

In the 1970’s Leidel expanded their mold making into the entire packaging and related closure fields, including Medical, pharmaceutical, drafting, cosmetic, and electrical products. By this time Leidel built a reputation for being a specialist in designing and building high quality auto-unscrewing molds for closures.

In the mid 1970’s to 1980 Leidel began molding operations under the registered name of Pent Plastics. PentaPlastics started with three small molding presses. In 1986 a 292 ton press was purchased and primary used to test newly built molds before shipping them to the customer. By 1996 the molding operation had grown to 7 molding machines producing small production runs, mostly for our mold making customers.

In 2004 Leidel started investing into universal high volume mold bases with customer bought components. In December 2004 Leidel leased an 8,000 ft2 building in Bohemia, NY. This brought the total manufacturing space to 22,000 ft2. The Bohemia facility was used as a warehouse to stock inventory and free up manufacturing space in Farmingdale.

In 2005, Leidel purchased five new 200 ton molding machines after securing several high volume products for the Hotel amenities market. These products required designing and building high cavitation, automatic flip top molds.  Four of the older presses were brought to the Bohemia facility and set up for production. The production revenue from these presses offset the cost of the Bohemia facility.

In 2006 Leidel was awarded another large, high volume flip top mold. A new 300 ton press was purchased for production and the mold was designed and built by Leidel. The total presses Leidel owns today is thirteen.