New owner sees growth at Michigan recycler Bata Plastics

Grand Rapids, Mich. — President Matt Hammond says Bata Plastics Inc. brings a polymer science approach to plastics recycling.

"We always joked that we didn't want to be the old 'Sanford and Son,' with piles of stuff out back. Hopefully when you were here today, this place seemed like a manufacturing floor as much as a recycling floor, and that's been our drive," Hammond said during a recent visit to the Grand Rapids-based company.

"We want to be able to talk the talk of lean manufacturing, with 5S and kaizen events," he said.

That helps the post-industrial recycler connect with some of its customers.

Hammond is a second-generation owner of Bata Plastics. His parents, W. Lee and Barb Hammond, bought the company in 1985. At the time, it was significantly smaller, just a two-person operation in nearby Byron Center. The company moved to its current location, a 120,000-square-foot former Steelcase storage facility, in 2007.

Hammond said he was not always destined to take over the family business.

"I started 19 years ago. They literally started me on a dirty dairy line. And they left me there a long time. Honestly. We joke about it. And he never admitted it, but my dad just wanted to make sure I was serious, that I wanted to learn the business," Hammond said.

From there, he learned maintenance, operations, sales and the rest of the recycling business. Bata now employs about 90 people and has plants in Michigan and Ohio.

In 2010, Hammond started to prepare to own the company. That meant going back to school.

"I felt the need to keep growing and learning and also to be in the position to buy the company, and my parents made it very clear that without a degree, that opportunity was never going to come," he said. So he worked days and went to school at night, earning a degree in supply chain management from Grand Valley State University in 2015.

Matt Hammond and his wife, Jamie, who heads human resources, bought the company in 2019. Today he says business is good.

"We're not afraid to handle tough stuff. We love the challenges," he said. "We love people bringing us hard stuff to recycle, and then we crack the code, and then we're able to add the easy stuff. So that's kind of one of our targets."