Holland manufacturer acquires Michigan company, adds 10 new jobs

By: Deborah Johnson Wood

Holland-based Coastal Container recently acquired VeriCorr Packaging’s plants in Troy and Farwell, doubling its employee base and its production of corrugated products. The acquisition also means the creation of 10 new jobs in Holland to enable the company to keep up with the additional production.

Coastal hired 34 of VeriCorr’s 39 employees, and plans to keep both plants open to increase the company’s ability to service customers throughout Lower Michigan. The acquisition positions Coastal to garner a larger share of the market for automotive packaging, a position that moves the company into serving Tier One customers.

“A lot of these items are what we call set up boxes,” says Bill Baumgartner, spokesperson. “They’re very, very large boxes that are filled with smaller components and shipped to distributors and to other countries. The Troy facility’s equipment wasn’t fast enough, or there were size limitations, and we have the capability to run the big stuff.”

The plan is to run the larger product in Holland and ship it to Troy for assembly, while the Farwell plant continues the light production, assembly, storage, and staging already handled there.

Baumgartner expects the firm to pick up additional business due to Coastal’s test lab that can perform over 30 different packaging tests.

“Other companies have two or three pieces of testing equipment,” he points out. “VeriCorr’s customers previously had to go outside to do the testing, and we can do that in-house. That gives them the ability to test without having to wait two weeks. We can put it on a shaker table and simulate trucking it to Mexico.”

Baumgartner expects the cost of the acquisition, new equipment and installation to run some $2 million.

Source: Bill Baumgartner, Coastal Container

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Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].