Continuing growth in pallet shipments has convinced Sigma Stretch to expand its Tulsa, Okla., operation.
Sigma has added 43,000 square feet to its Tulsa facility, boosting the footprint to 174,000 square feet, and has scheduled a grand opening of the new space for Oct. 5. The new space will be devoted to warehousing and office space, allowing better configuration of the manufacturing area, explained Sigma Stretch director of marketing Brian Fraser in a phone interview.
“It will allow more efficiency to support our business in the central United States and Mexico,” Fraser noted. “We have been very short on warehouse space.”
Fraser said that although North America imports a lot of manufactured goods, those goods must by organized on pallets and reshipped within the continent by distributors. Purchasing activity is brisk, growing faster than gross domestic product, and this activity is fuelling demand for plastic stretch packaging film to provide secure shipments. Domestic manufacturing, of course, also requires high volumes of stretch film for pallet wrap.
Fraser said about 800 distributors have learned the latest packaging technologies at Sigma Stretch's Shelbyville, Ky., Packworx facility where the company shows packaging principles. Sigma Stretch has organised those principles in its Rite-Gauging methodology, which it claims provides a holistic approach to industrial packaging. Sigma Stretch introduced Rite-Gauging several years ago and is expanding the Packworx audience into the original equipment manufacturing sector.
Sigma Stretch purchased the Tulsa facility in 1998 after the former owner, Atlantis Plastics Inc., decided to sell it. Tulsa processes a range of polyethylenes in cast and blown film lines that can churn out 120 million pounds of film per year.
It has invested about $25 million at the Tulsa site since the acquisition.
Sigma Stretch is part of Sigma Plastics Group, a diverse plastic and film and sheet producer that logged sales of $2.35 billion in 2015, according to Plastics News data. That sales figure makes it the third largest film and sheet producer in North America.
