Founded in 1969 by father and son team, Duke and Paul Keiswetter, Petoskey Plastics started out as a small operation converting roll stock into plastic bags. In 1978, not long after operations began, Petoskey Plastics started recycling in-house, grinding down industrial scrap from Dow Chemical Company and turning it into trash bags. From there, our passion for recycling grew exponentially.
Petoskey Plastics constantly sought out new material to recycle and equipment that would help them recycle more. Every few years the team would travel to Düsseldorf, Germany to look at the European wash lines and other recycling equipment. However, it wasn’t until 1992, when Petoskey Plastics received a grant from the state of Michigan for $1.2 million, that we were able to match the amount with the company’s own money and buy the recycling equipment we needed in order to expand. Soon after we introduced our first closed loop recycling line, creating Can Sacks® from recycled bottle deposit bags.
Since then, the company continued to grow and thrive, eventually adding a recycling facility in Hartford City, Indiana in 2000. In 2009, Petoskey Plastics’ GreenPE® earned SCS Certification for its recycled content. Many of the products we make contain at least some sort of recycled plastic, with a number of our customers opting to join our closed loop program. This year we are celebrating our 40thyear of recycling and what better way to celebrate than installing a new $8 million wash line that will not only allow the company to recycle more, but also create a higher quality recycled product. With its installation expected to be completed later this year, we are excited to see the results of this investment!