By Ed Rieckelman, Yakima Valley Business Times, November 2023
Oklahoma-based Paragon Films has begun expansion of its 138,000-square-foot facility in Union Gap. The company manufactures stretch film products to secure cased goods and other products on shipping pallets.
“We’re putting in a brand- new line in our Washington facility,” said Paragon Films Vice President of Marketing Tim Moar. “So, it will increase the Union Gap plant from three lines to four.”
New technologies consumer demand for more environmentally friendly products have allowed Paragon to expand its business and continue to invest in the local plant.
“We’re putting in a state-of- the-art line made by WMH, a company out of Germany,” Moar said. “It allows us to take post-consumer recycled plastic and put it into our stretch film, which isn’t being done by anybody else.”
Moar said the new patent- pending technology Paragon is using at their Union Gap
facility allows them to take that one step further by using less plastic, which makes their films thinner, and using 25% recycled plastic, which reduces the amount of virgin content used in any film on the market. Paragon is calling its new product Power Edge PCR (Post-Consumer Recycled).
With plants strategically located in Oklahoma, North Carolina and Washington, Paragon distributes its stretch film products to all 50 states, Canada, Mexico, South America and several international locations across various industries.
According to Paragon’s website, the company was founded in 1988 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, by industry pioneer Mike Baab, who envisioned combining cutting-edge technology with a highly skilled workforce to produce a line of high-performance stretch film unparalleled in value and consistency.
Moar said Baab used to hunt in central Washington and fell in love with Washington state. So, when Paragon decided to expand to the West, they chose Yakima County. Its Union Gap plant opened in 2013.
“When we looked at the proximity of our customers combined with the freeways and freight ways in the area, Yakima ended up being a good place to locate,” Moar said. “It was also a good place to get great labor talent to do the work we need.”
The large facility on Rose Street in Union Gap has two separate buildings across from each other. Moar said that they’ll be putting up a covered breezeway to connect them during the first expansion stage.
“As we continue to grow, we will eventually have one giant building,” he said.
Now headquartered in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, the company focuses on sustainability by reducing waste and minimizing its environmental footprint. Moar said they hope to lead others in the industry to do the same.
“We’re trying to build circularity in our industry — trying to get everybody focused on reducing the amount of virgin plastic used,” Moar said.
He added that’s a win-win for both the environment and their customers.
“We’re not only giving the customer better sustainability by using less virgin plastics, but we’re also giving them a cost savings doing it,” Moar said. “And that’s really kind of rare because with most companies when you buy a product that’s greener or more sustainable, you’re usually paying more for it.”
All of Paragon’s products are eco-friendly.
“It’s all 100 percent industrially recyclable,” he said. There’s a high value and demand for linear low-density plastic, which is the majority of what we make.”
Moar said they work with recycling companies up and down the West Coast to coordinate efforts to get used plastic to them and to educate them on how to process it and get it back to Paragon cleanly so they can get it right into their products.
The Union Gap plant employs 55 workers. Paragon plans to continue investing in this location.
“Being in Union Gap has been awesome,” Moar said. “That plant is our number one plant for high-quality product consistently coming out of it, and it’s because of the workforce we have there. That’s why we were confident to put this high-tech equipment into that location.”
Paragon Films is located at 915 Rose St, Union Gap.
This article originally published in the Yakima Valley Business Times.