Products made in the Wilmington area are turning up all over the country – even the world.

The lower Cape Fear region isn’t known as a manufacturing hub, but the number of such companies is growing, as is their market reach and advocacy.

Take PaperFoam, for example. In 2007, the Netherlands-based packaging company established a plant in Leland to serve a large client in Pender County. After years of slow growth, in 2020 PaperFoam took a big gamble, making a major investment in a larger plant across the river in Wilmington to produce its injection-molded paper packaging (read more about the company’s products in this issue’s MADE feature here).

“Injection molding is usually plastic, but our [process] injects a mixture of paper, potato starch and some cellulose. Ours is biodegradable, compostable and recyclable with other paper items within eight weeks,” said Malcolm Ford, PaperFoam’s global chief operations officer.

“We started with this material 25 years ago in Europe and built a strong business in Europe and the Far East,” Ford continued, noting that PaperFoam has plants in the Netherlands, the Czech Republic and Malaysia. “Only recently has the U.S. begun to catch up with sustainability. We’re still on a journey of education.”

Realizing that U.S. demand for their sustainable packaging products might be taking off as more American companies took sustainability responsibilities seriously, Ford scouted larger facilities in the area, settling on a much larger space along Wilmington’s U.S. 421 corridor that the company now occupies.

“We went from a 20,000-square-foot unit in Leland where we had 30 machines to a brand-new facility in Wilmington with 101,000 square feet of space,” he said. “We have infrastructure in place for over 102 machines. That’s our commitment to the future and to the product. We put our money where our mouth is.”

And speaking of mouths, because it’s made mostly of potato starch, PaperFoam can be recycled in an unusual way: as animal feed.  

“Starch is the mainstay of quite a number of foodstuffs,” Ford said. “We’re not selling this yet in the United States, but in Europe we’re selling waste to pig farmers. It has a slightly sweet taste; I occasionally eat our products to demonstrate how digestible it is. It’s that safe.”

So where can PaperFoam packaging be found? All across the country, Ford said, cushioning everything from medical and dental instruments to a number of products at Walmart to Burt’s Bees personal care products in displays near the cash register. A more recent customer is HelloFresh, which cradles fragile recipe ingredients like eggs in PaperFoam. The packaging is custom-made for each customer, adjusting the shape of each product but using the same process and machinery. 

Nine months after overseeing the company’s move into its new facility, Ford says he is seeing PaperFoam’s investment and his business development efforts starting to pay off, with some “huge companies” taking a serious look at its customized packaging materials.

Rulmeca Corp.’s motorized pulleys roll out to distributors and customers across the U.S. as well. The Wilmington company’s time frame for filling orders was cut in half recently as it added hot vulcanization of rubber – the preferred method for applying rubber to the pulleys – to its capabilities and eliminated the need to subcontract out the work, according to CEO Michael Gawinski.

“For us, learning how to put the rubber on was a big deal,” he added, noting that a fast turn-around on filling orders will keep customers from looking elsewhere for suppliers.

Raw materials for Rulmeca’s pulleys arrive regularly through the Port of Wilmington from the international parent company’s manufacturing center in Germany, Gawinski said. With a mixture of parts made locally and parts pre-made, the local workforce assembles the systems, which are used in food production and in a range of bulk handling and manufacturing processes. They reach their ultimate destinations via truck or air.

In April, Rulmeca Corp.’s Italian-based parent Rulmeca Group acquired a complementary company in Alabama. Adding Douglas Manufacturing Ltd. to the Rulmeca family was a move Gawinski described as “a marriage made in heaven” and another key to future growth in North and South American markets.

Also working to expand its markets across the U.S. is Wilmington Grill, which manufactures its outdoor cookers locally and trucks them to dealers. 

“We sell basically all over the Southeast,” said general manager Jon Barber, “but we have dealers in the Midwest and as far away as Vancouver, Canada. We’re always trying to add dealers in new locations. We target some key areas and find dealers in areas where we are not strong.”

The Port of Wilmington is an essential part of the distribution system for companies, like Flow Sciences Inc., that sell their products abroad. The Leland-based manufacturer of process safety equipment for the pharmaceutical and chemical industries serves markets in 35 countries in North America, Western Europe, Southeast Asia and in China. 

“We use air and ocean shipments,” said Steve Janz, the company’s vice president of international sales. “Most of our freight forwarders use Atlanta for international [air] shipments, but we use the Port of Wilmington [for ocean-going shipments]. I believe our export tonnage has doubled at N.C. Ports over the last several years.” 

Inevitably, growth generates challenges. Until fairly recently, Janz said company officials tried to solve problems or locate resources in a vacuum, because there was no area network. That changed with the establishment of the Cape Fear Manufacturing Partnership (CFMP) in December 2020.

Starting with just a few companies based in Brunswick, Columbus, New Hanover and Pender counties, the membership has grown to more than 40 manufacturers, according to Erin Easton, director of workforce training/development at Cape Fear Community College. With that expanding network has come greater visibility in the business community and increased advocacy for the resources manufacturers need to thrive here.

It has also created community, said Easton, who serves as the college’s liaison with the partnership.

“In the past, these guys and girls didn’t know each other, even when they were in the same industrial park,” she said. “Now they can help each other and leverage things together.”

During the pandemic, members shared information on the policies their companies had instituted, Easton added, saying, “It’s neat to see these industries come together instead of being siloed. I have seen on some email threads and other communications that many members will ask each other questions, like how to ship large items, or how to fix a particular machine. They are able to get answers in this region and bounce ideas off each other.”

One challenge all the members face is a shortage of trained workers, said Shawn Dixon, chair of CFCC’s Applied Technologies Department. In response, the college has created or expanded courses designed to prepare individuals for entry-level positions in manufacturing or specific career paths. 

A new effort, launching in August, offers evening sessions in CFCC’s Computer Integrated Machining program, making it possible for high school students or employed adults to participate. Those who complete the first two semesters can enter an apprenticeship program to continue their training while earning or enroll for a second year in the machining tech program to earn an associate degree. Wilmington Grill is one company that maintains an apprenticeship partnership with the college.

The content of these classes is partly shaped by members of the manufacturing partnership.

“We have experts who teach for us, but they are not out in the field working every day; they don’t see the challenges,” Dixon said. “We rely on [CFMP] who have their boots on the ground to tell us what skills they need. Without them, we wouldn’t know what’s going on, the changes in industry. We’re behind if we’re not teaching the latest trends.”

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