When Mercury Plastics Inc. bought Baltimore-based Maryland Thermoform Corp. in 2020, it found a business with a strong history, a customer list that blended well with its own and a manufacturing base that was strong but could use a little help to upgrade operations.
"We're going to clean the place, put our touch on it and let them continue to do their thing. They do good work," Mercury CEO Rick Goldman told Plastics News Editor Don Loepp at the time.
It seemed like things were going well for the renamed Mercury Plastics MD — it received a sustainability and energy efficiency award from the Regional Manufacturing Institute of Maryland in 2022 — but on June 20 the city of Baltimore named it in a lawsuit about plastics pollution alongside global giants Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. It's not clear why Mercury and Adell Plastics Inc., a compounder with operations just outside Baltimore, were named, but it was shocking.
"As a new business in Baltimore, we were shocked and disappointed," General Manager Carl Livesay told PN's Jim Johnson.
"If the information reported by the press is accurate, the lawsuit is absurd and frankly a slap in the face considering the multimillion-dollar investment Mercury Plastics has made in Baltimore city since our arrival in November 2020," he said.
Unlike Coke or Pepsi, which use billions of plastic bottles each year — the suit also names Pepsi's Frito-Lay snack food business — Mercury Plastics MD was known for its candle packaging clamshells and trays and some other consumer products, but it also supplies the defense, marine and aerospace industries.
