Hoerner Waldorf Corporation had its beginnings in Baker-Collins Company, a small print shop established in 1886 in downtown St. Paul (Minn.). By 1890 Baker Collins had become the H.L. Collins Company, and advertised themselves as printers, binders, stationers, and engravers. M.W. Waldorf had become secretary of the firm by 1894. By 1906 the firm was engaged in the manufacture of colored labels and folding boxes, and M.W. Waldorf was secretary and manager. The company moved to a larger plant located in the Midway District around 1907. Also in 1907 M.W. Waldorf established the Waldorf Box Board Company.

In 1915 M.W. Waldorf and Paul N. Myers created the Waldorf Paper Products Company in a merger of three apparently separate but cooperating companies: The American Paper Stock Company, suppliers of raw material; Waldorf Box Board Company, manufacturers of paperboard; and the H.L. Collins Company, converters of cartons and containers.

Waldorf Paper Products Company merged with Hoerner Boxes, Inc., of Keokuk, Iowa in May 1966 to form Hoerner Waldorf Corporation. An acrimonious proxy fight preceded the sale of the company in February 1977 to Champion International Corp., a Connecticut-based forest products company. In 1985 St. Paul management, led by Eugene Frey, engineered a successful leveraged buy-out that led to the establishment of Waldorf Corporation. By 1994 Waldorf, headquartered in St. Paul, was producing more than 400,000 tons of recycled paperboard annually, supplying printed boxes to large consumer products companies such as General Mills Inc., Procter & Gamble Co., and Hormel Foods Corp. It at that date had about 2,200 employees, annual revenue of about $375 million, and was the fifth-largest privately-held company in Minnesota.

Frey and his family sold Waldorf Corporation to Atlanta-based Rock-Tenn Company in January 1997. At the time of the sale Waldorf operated nine paperboard recycling and conversion plants in seven states, with its principal manufacturing operations at its St. Paul plant.