10/31/05 — Mount Olive bag plant buys out competitor

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Mount Olive bag plant buys out competitor

By News-Argus Staff
Published in News on October 31, 2005 1:51 PM

MOUNT OLIVE -- The manaager of the Hilex Poly plant in Mount Olive said her company has purchased its closest competitor.

Kim Bowers said Hilex Poly bought out Vanguard Plastics. The acquisition makes Hilex Poly the largest plastic bag manufacturing company in the world, with the capacity to make more than 45 billion bags a year,and $650 million dollars in annual sales, she said.

"The impact to the Mount Olive plant is not immediate," she said. "However, I expect that we will continue to see incremental growth at our plant."

She said the Mount Olive plant is already doubling the capacity of its agricultural film business. Construction is in process to convert another line to make the mulch film. She said the Mount Olive plant has been selected to host the first "integration" meeting for the Vanguard plant managers to see how the company operatesy.

"Our plant was selected due to our overall combined safety, quality and productivity performance in the company," Ms. Bowers said. "It is certainly an honor to be selected to host this initial kickoff meeting for our new company. Our owner has been very pleased with the performance and contributions of the Mount Olive employees to the performance of the company this year."