TRAVERSE CITY -- Grand Traverse Industries, a northern Michigan manufacturing company is expanding after landing a $4,000,000 dollar new contract from the state. It's a deal that means the creation of 20 news jobs in the Traverse City Area.
GTI is a nonprofit corporation that provides packaging, plastic bag manufacturing, vending, janitorial and interpreter services. It also trains and employees more than 300 people with disabilities.
Recently, GTI purchased another building in the City's Industrial Park and coincidentally the company was just awarded a full state contract for seven types of poly trash can liners.
CEO of Grand Traverse Industries Steve Perdue says, "Since we started in the bag business we've been pursuing this contract.. We won it on a competitive bid process, it was long but worth it."
This marks the company's second contract with the state, GTI s already producing five other types of trash liners, used at state correction facilities and a variety of state offices.
The total value of the new deal is estimated to be $775 thousand dollars a year or close to $4 million dollars over the course of five years.
The expansion includes the creating of 15 to 20 new jobs. But job creation isn't the only positive to this expansion, Perdue says it will create a trickle down effect that promises to boost the local and state economy. Perdue says, "The largest amount of dollars in a cost of a bag is film, so it means a lot of film that we'll be buying from Plastcon. In fact, my first initial order to get started was seven million feet of film! So then they're buying resin, most of that, if not all is coming from Michigan, coming to Traverse City, being turned into film, and the film's being turned into bags by GTI."
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