News

Star Celebrates 30 Years of Being Material Problem Solvers

RAVENSWOOD, WV — The Star Plastics team is excited to celebrate 30 years in business this August. “Star celebrating 30 years in operation is the celebration of an idea that can become a successful reality,” says Doug Ritchie, Founder, President and CEO.

Star’s humble beginnings can be traced back to BorgWarner, who three decades ago had scrap material they thought was reusable and needed a toll processor to facilitate growth of a recycled content resin supply. In stepped Doug Ritchie with a solution. Doug provided a process that could grind, melt, test, extrude, and pelletize that scrap material so it could be reused. That process, while now much more refined, is the basis of Star’s current operations and began a recycling movement that still lives within the company.

Over the last 30 years, Star has been a reliable and trustworthy material supplier who provides consistent, lot-to-lot compounded products at competitive prices. Two of Star’s main priorities throughout the years have been consistent quality and customer service. Not a single box leaves a Star facility without knowing exactly what’s in it and how it will perform. Whether it’s property or performance related, we fine-tune our material to fit each of our customers’ individual application needs, and then follow it through to its successful molding. To Star Plastics, customers are not just numbers in the system or profits gained – they are the reason we exist.

In the beginning, Star worked directly with a single company, so high quality and superb customer service was paramount to satisfy that client. Their satisfaction was our lifeblood. This past experience shaped how Star views customers to this day. Even after our expansion, that specificity and customer service has remained a staple of the Star formula.

We operate with our core values in mind at Star Plastics. “We’re able to successfully service larger, global customers, while still hiring locally, growing our workforce, and supporting the communities we live in,” comments Molly Ritchie, Marketing Specialist. Star has the dependable, responsive, and stable feel of a local company, but we also have the capabilities to satisfy large customers nationally and internationally, in North America, Asia and beyond. Whether it’s on price, volume, quality, turnaround, or professional service, the Star team knows that high quality and good service is what keeps our customers; we don’t take that for granted.

Today, Star is excelling at an unprecedented level. The team at Star is proud of our ability to read and move with the market. Being proactive and flexible in problem solving–be it material shortages, price increases, varying additive availability–has served the company well, as Star has remained a local West Virginia product from the start. “Within the compounded plastics segment, which isn’t that much older than Star Plastics, we’ve grown and supported our customers through many market fluctuations over the years,” says Chuck Hoop, Director of Sales. “That makes me feel proud.”

During the next 30 years and beyond, Star will continue to move closer to our customers by offering application specifications with OEMs and Molders alike, solidifying our position in the market. Our growth plan for the next five years is projected to follow our current upward trend, allowing us to serve our customers well into the future.

The Star team plans on celebrating this milestone by reflecting on where we’ve been and looking ahead to where we’re going. “We’re celebrating 30 years of people working together to make an idea a reality; 30 years of hard work, dedication, learning, growing, and not being afraid of change,” concludes Doug Ritchie.