Butler-MacDonald of Indianapolis has seen a significant spike in business since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company serves customers across the country as both a plastics toll processor performing size reduction, polymer separation, metal and contaminant removal, pelletizing and compounding, as well as a polymer supplier providing high quality regrind and reprocessed resins including HIPS, PP, LDPE, LLDPE, and HDPE. March 2020 sales were up 10 percent over 2019.
Many of Butler-MacDonald’s customers are deemed “essential” and the company has received several letters from customers asking them to remain fully operational and keep the important supply channel open.
Not only has Butler-MacDonald stayed fully operational running three shifts, they have added capacity in the form of increased staff, extended hours (including Saturdays) and overtime. president Scott Johnson attributes the increase in business primarily to an increase demand for polymers used in the fight against COVID-19 including plastics for medical face shields, disinfecting wipe containers and lids, bleach bottle caps and more. To a lesser extent additional business has come to Butler-MacDonald as other smaller suppliers have either shut down or do not have the inventory to meet the increased demands of their customers.
Because the company has a long history of recovering high quality polymers from plastics or parts that most recyclers would consider unusable, Butler-MacDonald has been able to take in additional source materials that others won’t and use it to create high-quality, near virgin polymers to keep up with the sharp increase in demand.
Published in the June 2020 Edition
