The history of AFA

AFA was established in 1965 by ex-Phillips engineers in order to take advantage of the booming plastic molding industry. As such, in its first 7 years of existence, AFA provided custom molding services to big European consumer goods companies who outsourced the production of their plastic packages to third parties. As a custom molder, then, at the time AFA had no products of its own neither any underlying Intellectual Property, acting solely as a job-shop, offering injection molding expertise.

In 1972 AFA started to manufacture plastic trigger sprayers (having received a license from its American inventor), thus becoming an hybrid business: a custom molder for third parties’ products, as well as, a producer of its own products which were sold via a distributors network primarily in Europe.

In 1998 AFA’s current owner, Ariel Gratch, left a successful M&A practice in New York in order to transform AFA into an innovator that will disrupt the commoditized plastic packaging business of the fast moving consumer goods industry. Following decades of brand-building by the big consumer products companies that assigned only negligible value to the underlying package, AFA borrowed Steve Job’s playbook (“you can’t be a great software company without being a great hardware company”) in order to develop liquid dispensing platforms that will de-commoditize the package. With this strategy AFA sought to partner with the big consumer products companies in order to offer the consumer a combination of “software” (the liquid) and “hardware” (the package) that will distinguish the branded products from the looming threat of the fast growing private label industry.

Teaming up with AFA’s legendary head of product development, Wim Maas, and Ariel’s nephew, Nir Gadot, who joined the company in order to establish global manufacturing and supply chain for its new products, management of AFA embarked on the long journey of reinventing liquid dispensing. Over the course of the next two decades, AFA was able to disrupt the status quo in home care, food and beverage and other segments, assisting some of the better known brands to create a new value proposition where the liquid formulae and the dispensing package jointly offer superior products that enhance consumer experience.

In 2021 Ariel passed the rein of daily management to Nir, in order to join the Supervisory Board and formulate AFA’s future destiny. Equipped with 20 years of operating and commercial experience, having built state of the art production facilities, and opening up the Asian markets for AFA's new products, Nir assumed the position of Chief Executive and minority shareholder of AFA, ready to write the next chapter of its story. During this period, AFA recruited a new generation of managers who pursued strategic partnerships with the big multinational players in home care and personal care in order to lay the foundations for rapid expansion of AFA’s award winning aerosol replacement – The Flairosol family of products. With Flairosol durability and highest quality dispenser, AFA is thus planting the seeds for the transformation of the single use package into first, refill and recharge propositions, and later on into home devices and appliances capturing the growing trend of turning home-care into life-style.

Consumer priorities, expectations and motivations are rapidly changing. The digital revolution, coupled with ever increasing concerns for the environment and changes in family structure and activities, are affecting consumer behavior in an around the house, at the work-place and on-the-go. Consumption is a by-product of design, beauty, life-style and wellness, dictating high-quality and durable devices to replace single use commoditized packages, with emphasis on a joyful experience and better protection for the environment.

Cognizant to these new trends in home-care and personal-care, AFA is introducing new products, sold directly to the consumer, and building new platforms for the liquid dispensing of the future.