Ecologic is opening its doors next week in the Manteca Industrial Park, east of South Main Street and north of the Highway 120 Bypass, to manufacture food grade disposable containers. 

The 60,000-square-foot facility is located at 550 Carnegie Street in the heart of the industrial area that includes Second Harvest Food Bank and Mountain Valley Trucking.  The firm has hired some 30 employees to work in the facility.

Julie Corbett is the founder of the firm and its CEO, overseeing the manufacturing of “packaging that the world can live with,” most of which have not been recycled in the past and have just become trash including water bottles, as well as milk and laundry soap containers.

The CEO said building their factory in the Central Valley is a major endeavor, adding that they have to be successful in the high-cost, high-regulatory environment to ensure  it can be  duplicated anywhere in the world.  

Ecologic was launched five years ago as a private, venture-backed start-up company with a plan to create compostable outer shells for its containers made with recycled cardboard and old newspapers. The inner pouches reportedly are formed out of plastic – up to 70 percent less than in traditional packaging. 

Seventh Generation laundry detergent packaging was the firm’s first product launch and is available in approximately 7,000 stores across the U.S. Safeway is making use of Ecologic packaging for one of its detergent lines sold more than 1,100 stores.

A spokesman for the Ecologic firm said they chose the Manteca location for several reasons, including the fact that Safeway and a number of large distribution centers are located in the general area. It was also noted that Manteca is centralized near the I-5 trucking corridor.

Corbett was quoted in an interview as saying that consumers in the United States and overseas are ready for sustainable packaging.  It is clear in the grocery stores, she said, when more customers are asking for paper rather than plastic for the carry-outs.