CORRY, Pa. -- Ever since he became a salesman at his father's plastics company in 1972, Hoop Roche had wanted a piece of Proctor & Gamble's product packaging business.

	V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette Paul "Hoop" Roche of Erie Plastics on the boxing and shipping line for plastic lids that will cap Folger Coffee containers. Click photo for larger image.

"From my first day here, I called on them for years to get on the bid list. We finally got in," said Roche, the 58-year-old chairman of Erie Plastics, which generates about half of its $85 million in annual revenue from packaging it produces for the Cincinnati-based consumer conglomerate.

The breakthrough came in the early 1980s when Erie Plastics finally convinced P&G that it would be the most efficient supplier for the push-pull plastic closures on P&G's Ivory, Joy and Dawn dishwashing liquid brands. Those contracts "put us on the map," said Roche.

P&G doesn't use the push-pull closures on its dishwashing liquid anymore (Erie Plastics now makes them for Colgate's Palmolive dish soap), but it's kept Erie Plastics busy supplying the colorful cups and spouts for its popular laundry detergents, including Tide, Cheer and Era, the closures for Pringles snacks and Downy fabric softener's cup-like caps.

So it didn't surprise Erie Plastics four years ago when P&G asked it to help create the first all-plastic can for top-selling coffee brand Folgers. Erie Plastics worked on every step of the design for the bright red AromaSeal package and manufactures the black polyethylene lids that top the canister.

The 39-ounce Folgers Classic Roast canister showed up on grocery shelves in September and has apparently been a hit with consumers who for years have only bought coffee in traditional metal cans.

Sales for the Classic Roast blend jumped 4 percent in the October-December quarter, when it was available only in the 39-ounce plastic container, said Folgers spokeswoman Tonia Hyatt. The company expects to unveil the AromaSeal canister in other sizes and flavor blends throughout this year.

The canister earned a 2003 Package of the Year Award from Food & Drug Packaging trade magazine. Hyatt said consumers seem to like it "because of its ease of handling, snap-tight lid that seals in freshness and easy peel-off seal that doesn't require a can opener."

Brett Niggel, product development engineer for Erie Plastics who spent months working on the design, said P&G had a prototype at the start and that he and other members of the design team helped refine the package shape and its seal.

One big worry P&G had was that the plastic canister might not provide customers with the familiar coffee aroma they get when they open metal cans.

"But there's more of a blast of aroma with the plastic canister," said Roche. "And that's a good boost." Though it won't disclose the exact size of its contract with Folgers, Erie Plastics produces several hundred thousand of the AromaSeal lids daily at its plant in rural Corry in the southeast corner of Erie County.

The Folgers lids are a fraction of the 30 million parts it makes every day for P&G and other big customers such as Alcoa, a partner in a venture that makes and distributes closures for 400 bottled water brands that include Deer Park, Poland Spring and Naya. It also makes Wyeth Pharmaceuticals' pill dispensers, Gillette's Soft&Dri deodorant packages and the holders for Newell Rubbermaid's Sharpie markers.

After working at other plastics firms, Roche's father, Paul C. Roche, an engineer who put himself through Yale University during the Depression, launched the business in 1960 in a converted roller skating rink. His early products included Cut-rite wax paper dispensers and Lady Schick hot roller kits.

Hoop -- legally, he's Paul Roche, Jr., but he's always gone by the nickname he earned by being born the same year a horse named "Hoop Jr." won the Kentucky Derby -- worked at Erie Plastics part time during high school before he earned a business degree from the University of Notre Dame.

After college and three years in the Coast Guard, including a year in Vietnam, he got a master's in business at American University.

He never wanted to work anywhere but the family business. He became president in 1981 and majority owner in 1991, when he bought out his two brothers' shares. His wife, Marne, a local real estate agent in Corry, sits on the board and two of their five children work full time at the company: Jane, 30, is the marketing coordinator, and Matthew, 29, a salesman. Daughter Katie, 26, is a kindergarten teacher but oversees the company's line of corporate logo clothing. Another son, Patrick, 22, is a student at Penn State who works at the plant on school breaks. Daughter Maggie, 15, is in high school.

Minority shareholders include Ron Walters, the president, and American Capital, a Bethesda, Md., firm that invested $10 million in Erie Plastics in 1999.

The company employs 400 at four locations: Corry; a sales and development office in Cincinnati; a plant in Westborough, Mass., that makes personal care packaging for Gillette and water bottle closures for Perrier; and a joint venture in Hungary that makes juice bottle dispensers for Minute Maid.

The Corry headquarters includes a 430,000-square-foot manufacturing facility with 60 molding machines that operates round-the-clock with two 12-hour shifts seven days a week.

Roche, an avid skier and snowboarder, tries to keep his employees healthy with on-site fitness options, including a quarter-mile walking track around the interior perimeter of the plant and 10-minute stretching sessions that plant workers as well as administrative employees participate in before their work day begins.

There's also a medical doctor at the plant once a week to provide checkups and prescriptions.

Though he's handed much of the day-to-day operations over to Walters, Roche isn't eyeing retirement.

He's focusing more on marketing and trying to re-position the company with proprietary products to better compete against its largest rival, Precise Technology, a consumer plastics maker in North Versailles, and other industry leaders, including Plastek Group of Erie and Nypro of Clinton, Mass.

Overseeing a family business "is a different level of commitment," said Roche. "It's not just a business ... I guess when it's not fun anymore, I won't do it."