CALUMET CITY | Although its corporate headquarters sits in a nondescript industrial area of Calumet City, Plastics Color Corp. is a company with a global footprint.
The company combines color, which it formulates to its customer's needs, with clear plastic resins to create a raw material which the customer uses in products that span all facets of the plastic industry -- from tubes to toys, syringes to shavers.
"We do compounding of plastics additives and color into various polymers," Joe Byrne, PCC vice president of sales and marketing, said. "In some case, we improve them for performance and make them more cosmetically appealing. Our products are in almost any consumer goods you touch that's plastic."
The 40-year-old, privately-held company has been headquartered in Calumet City since 1982 when it purchased American Thermo Plastics and relocated its offices from New Jersey. PCC also has operations in Asheboro, N.C., and Nanjing, China.
PCC handles liquid color orders in China at the same time it fulfills food-contact requirements in the United States, Canada and Europe.
"Ours is a true vision of partnership," PCC President Douglas Borgsdorf said. "We can address customers' specific needs and service customers anywhere. We actually immerse ourselves into customers' operations, creating solutions to everything from the product itself to the packaging to the storage."
Of its total 85-member U.S. work force, PCC has 45 employees at the local facility, which provides colorants for the commodity plastics market, including for signage, wire and cable.
The company has annual sales that range from $30 million to $50 million, Byrne said.
In 2008, PCC's North Carolina plant introduced its "plant within a plant" production and research and development facility where it can maintain strict quality control and security.
The unit is a fully functioning manufacturing unit that operates alongside PCC's traditional production platforms as a separate, self-contained operation. It allows the company to apply and evaluate the most advanced manufacturing techniques, including just-in-time production, under actual conditions.
"Plant within a plant isn't brand new in concept, but not all companies do it," Byrne said. "It's an attempt to service a different type of customer ... Anyone who needs to control cross contamination, such as the medical and pharmaceutical industries. If they don't require it today, they will in the near future."
Plastic Color Corp.
When opened: 1982
Location: 14201 Paxton Ave., Calumet City, also North Carolina, China
Phone: (800) 922-9936
Type of business: Manufactures colorant for the plastics industry
Number of employees: 85 in the United States
Web site: www.plasticscolor.com
