By: Deborah Johnson Wood
BATA Plastics is ready for a major expansion. But the company is landlocked at their current location in Byron Center. The company, West Michigan’s largest plastics recycler, is the first to move to the new Grand Rapids Commerce Center, the former Steelcase manufacturing complex on 40th Street.
With the company’s expansion to ten acres and 120,000 square feet of manufacturing space, President and CEO W. Lee Hammond expects to generate 20 new jobs. Some of those jobs will be technology-based positions in the firm’s new certified plastics testing lab; others will be in quality control and production.
“We'll be setting up our own in-house laboratory, and we just hired a guy with 30 years of experience to help us set it up,” Hammond says.
This year, nearly 26 million pounds of scrap plastics will be recycled and processed for reuse.
“We shred it, grind it, bail it, and re-pelletize it to reuse it,” Hammond says. An avid outdoorsman, he hates to see the plastics go into landfills. “We’re talking the talk, and we’re trying to walk the walk.”
Last year, the company achieved $6.2 million in sales, up from $900,000 just eight years ago. Hammond attributes the company’s success to partnering with businesses like Cascade Engineering, and to the team effort of his wife, Barb, CFO, his son, Matt, operations manager, and dedicated employees.
“Without them we wouldn’t be doing what we’re doing now,” Hammond says. “The good Lord’s blessed us and we’ve been extremely lucky.”
Grubb & Ellis Paramount Commerce brokered the transaction.
Source: W. Lee Hammond, BATA Plastics; Mary Ann Sabo, Sabo Public Relations
Deborah Johnson Wood is development news editor for Rapid Growth. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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