Essential medical products, essential oils add growth for thermoformer Premier Plastics

Salt Lake City-based thermoformer Premier Plastics Inc. is adding machinery and employees as it grows with customers after looking out for front-line workers during the pandemic.

Founded in 1989, the packaging manufacturer invested $1 million in a Sencor 2500 Ultra thermoformer with automation, hired six people and added a third shift.

The growth is driven in part by demand for packaging for products that can bring an air of comfort to people at a time of unprecedented health and economic worries.

"Several regular clients have seen increases in their volumes, and it is related to people staying home because of COVID-19. They make home aromatherapy products," Premier Plastics founder and President Jim Holbrook said in a phone interview. "With everybody staying home, sales have skyrocketed for them."

There's a sweet smell of success for Premier Plastics, too. This year sales are expected to rise to about $16 million for the company, which also serves the medical, nutraceutical, beauty, retail and consumer electronics markets with medical-grade, food-grade and anti-static packaging.

"We're on track right now to show a 70 percent sales increase over last year," Holbrook said, pointing to the home goods and medical markets as the main drivers.

Premier Plastic's website shows it won a 2018 packaging award for a product called Australian Dreams essential oils. Essential oils used in aromatherapy are typically extracted from plants and distilled. The highly concentrated oils may be inhaled directly or indirectly.

The Mayo Clinic says aromatherapy is thought to work by stimulating smell receptors in the nose, which then send messages through the nervous system to the part of the brain that controls emotions.

Some studies have shown that aromatherapy might have health benefits, including relief from anxiety and depression, improved sleep and improved quality of life, particularly for people with chronic health conditions, the clinic's website says.

For Australian Dreams, Holbrook said Premier Plastics designed a tray made of recycled PET to hold the 10 bottles of various scents of essential oils. One of the plastic company's box manufacturers, All Packaging, handles the colorful printing of the kangaroo image on the boxes.

In addition to home goods, Premier Plastics is producing more packaging for the medical market. The business has remained opened as an essential service with some clients supplying components and support materials for COVID-19 testing kits, Holbrook said.

"We're seeing quite a bit of volume increase in that segment as well," he added.

For the medical market, Premier Plastics produces packaging that can withstand sterilization, storage, shipment and delivery while offering security, safety and traceability. The company has been serving this market since its early days when it manufactured individual polycarbonate trays for contact lenses.

"Thermoforming polycarbonate is tricky," Holbrook said. "We have focused over the years on the tough jobs — the ones that other thermoformers wouldn't do because of the physical aspect or the tooling aspects. We don't do salad containers or cookie trays."

Before the pandemic boosted packaging sales for home goods and medical packaging, Premier Plastics was seeing steady growth. However, one machine, a Sencorp 2200, was being used less, Holbrook said. It was a 1970s model that had been rebuilt in the early 1980s, he added.

"We had an older piece of equipment — not an original piece but from early on — and it had a good, long life," Holbrook said. "We decided to let it go to somebody that could use it. We sold it to a local machine dealer and that gave us the good excuse to get another machine."

The company went with the Sencorp 2500, which Holbrook likens to a workhorse. Equipped with Sencorp's proprietary, robotic off-load system, the machine is up to 70 percent faster than previous models and includes in-line steel rule tools. These tools are designed to shorten production times by allowing the Premier Plastics team to perform changeovers within hours, not days, which is a significant cost savings.

"That machine gives us 1½ times the output than my other machines," Holbrook said. "We're talking about buying another one soon and replacing an 8-year-old machine. We have a very modern fleet."

To keep up with packaging demand, Premier Plastics also has gone from two full shifts to three and brought on new employees for material handling, production and quality control.

"We're contemplating going to four shifts," Holbrook said, noting he has 49 employees now.

While adjusting for its growth spurts, Premier Plastics also produced 350,000 disposable face shields in March and April for health care workers treating patients fighting the deadly respiratory virus.

The company dedicated 20 percent of its production capabilities to make the three components — face shield, headband and top cover — out of recycled PET when personal protective equipment was in short supply in the U.S.

Premier Plastics produced about 10,000 face shields a day, or 50,000 a week, for distribution to health care facilities and their staffs and hard-hit communities like a Navajo reservation.

"We created something we could run very quickly, and we were able to send them around the world," Holbrook said.

Depending on the end user, some were sold to cover the production cost but most were donated to nonprofit organizations.

"We have a great team," Holbrook said. "They're my biggest asset and then the equipment."