Local plastics company keeps on growing

January 28, 2020

Mack Spencer - Enterprise Journal

Gigantic Bag and JD Warehouse are hiring.

John Westbrook, owner of both companies, told McComb Lions Club members last week that the combined workforce is about 72, and there are eight open positions at the moment.

“I’ve got ads out all over to hire people,” Westbrook said.

Beginner jobs, with on the job training, start at $10 an hour, but applicants who have taken the manufacturing course at Southwest Mississippi Community College can get an additional $2 per hour on their starting pay.

The program “is good for a lot of industries, not just us,” Westbrook said. “It can take a long time to train employees. This course can give people a boost coming into the manufacturing environment.”

Employees who come in with little to no experience at the entry level can be trained on the job and gradually work their way up the experience levels and the pay scale, he said. Training is done a piece at the time for various skills and tasks, and mastering each can move trainees up the ladder.

More experienced workers can make more than $20 per hour.

Westbrook’s companies offer the highest level of United Healthcare insurance coverage, he said, and cover much of the premium cost, as well as half of dependent coverage premiums, he said.

“Of every 10 employees who start at the entry level, maybe three stay,” Westbrook said. “Of those who have come in with experience, none have ever left. Other jobs offer higher starting salaries, like tugboats ... but those are more dangerous, with bigger, billion-dollar companies.

“The jobs we have are good opportunities.”

Employees of the companies work somewhat like police or fire department employees, he said. “If you work two days, you’re off two days. If you work three days, you’re off three days.

“We have some strict requirements,” he quipped. “You have to show up ... You have to pass a drug test.”

Gigantic Bag, housed in the former Polyflex building in Summit, heats and grinds polyethylene pellets to create a plastic film that can be extruded from machines to create bags as small as 4 inches, or big enough to contain a car.

Westbrook described the process as being “like chewing gum and blowing a bubble.”

The most familiar product to local residents is garbage bags, 30-gallon and 55-gallon, that many organizations in the area have sold as a fundraiser. Westbrook said he is looking at possibly adding 20-gallon and 40-gallon varieties.

JD Warehouse started in the building with Gigantic Bag, but, needing more room as business grew, Westbrook bought the former Kellwood building next door and moved the warehouse operation there.

“I thought the warehouse would be a supplement to the bag company, but the warehouse has become a major job,” he said.

The warehouse affiliate contracts with other companies to take in their products, package them and then distribute the products using contracted trucking companies.

That business has grown so much that, even with the Kellwood building, “we’re out of room again,” Westbrook said. “We’re looking for more space.”