Plastics Company Moves to Lodi

Epic Plastics Inc., formerly of Richmond, Calif., spent the past 10 months moving in and turning a former Pacific Coast Producers storage facility at 104 E. Turner Road, Lodi, into a manufacturing facility producing Bend-A-Board landscape edging from 100 percent recycled polyethylene.

President Craig Boblitt, whose company earned in excess of $6 million in sales last year, said about 30 percent of Epic Plastics' 35 employees came over from the East Bay site. The rest of his staff has been hired locally.

A $1.7 million recycling-zone loan from the California Integrated Waste Management Board certainly didn't hamper matters much.

"It helped us make the move," Boblitt said. "Part of the loan was for working capital. We always had some production going on at one of the plants. We just couldn't afford not to."

California's Recycling Market Development Zone Revolving Loan Program provides direct loans to eligible businesses that use post-consumer or secondary waste materials to manufacture new products or that reduce the waste resulting from the manufacture of a product.

Sometime next month, Boblitt hopes to turn on the switch to his new, $1 million manufacturing line producing Bella Roso composites, a solid decking product in 2x6 dimensions that looks like clear-heart redwood.

"It's one of the most complicated things to make it solid in the continuous extrusion process," he said, noting that his sales force is preparing to talk to vendors about the new decking product that will have a redwood color and embossed grain and will never splinter.

As for its original product, Bend-A-Board is resistant to insects, termites and boring worms found in outdoor environments. It will not split, splinter or rot and does not absorb moisture or promote bacterial growth, according to an Epic promotional piece.

"We make our product from 100 percent post-consumer plastic -- all those polyethelyne bottles people recycle. We buy about 1 million pounds a month," Boblitt said.

Primarily purchased by landscapers and gardeners, the product is sold through irrigation-supply centers and Meeks building centers in states west of the Rockies, plus Denver and Texas. Northern California remains its dominant market area. The (Stockton, California) Record