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Willow Ridge Plastics aims for longevity in customer relationships, brevity in customer products. The Erlanger-based company manufactures additives that make plastic products disintegrate. Its patented Masterbatch additives are sold in pellet form to companies around the world that create a variety of plastic items - particularly plastic bags for consumer uses - and want to have those items degrade after disposal.
"Plastic lasts 300 to 400 years before it degrades on its own," said President William Hogan, who has worked in the plastic compounding field for 30 years. "We accelerate that process to about a year."
Most of the demand for Willow Ridge's nine products comes from overseas, especially in South America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa, said Hogan.
Production of plastic bags and other items, as well as the demand for those things, shifts and moves around the world, said Willow Ridge sole owner and Chairwoman Elizabeth Tu, who started the company in 1993. It's critical that she and Hogan stay current on hot manufacturing sites and where they're exporting - considerations often driven by governmental or consumer demand.
"You have to consider where the plastic is being made and where it's being exported and what the policies and standards are in those countries," said Tu, who is used to staying abreast of world markets as owner of Cincinnati-based E.Tu Associates Inc., a Far East trade...