From the windows of Eagle Performance Plastics’ sprawling manufacturing facility along I-41, company President and CEO Jared Bailin can watch the Outagamie County landfill grow.
He says it’s hard to ignore that daily reminder of the need to divert waste. It inspired a new partnership with Green Bay’s Convergen Energy that has been led by Eagle’s Sustainability Specialist Jordy Krall, who says the new program is expected to reduce the plastic machining firm’s landfill waste by a whopping 200 tons per year.
Krall says Eagle launched the partnership after connecting with Convergen in 2023 at an event hosted by Green Bay Innovation Group. Convergen takes the plastic shavings left behind by Eagle’s plastic machining process and turns them into fuel pellets that can be incinerated in industrial boilers at much higher temperatures. By incorporating advanced technologies like dry sorbent injection, Krall says, Convergen’s process results in a clean, efficient, EPA‑compliant burn.
“We’ve had a problem since we started that we can’t do anything with [our waste],” Krall says. “So we implemented a compactor on site that we had put in and it takes about 80% of our waste.”
A history of innovation
The company known today as Eagle Performance Plastics was founded by Jared Bailin’s father David and uncle Iver in 1971 as an industrial supplier. The firm gradually narrowed its focus and today specializes in custom machined plastic components for industries including packaging, food processing, conveyors and special machinery.
“Our bread and butter is small quantities, because everything we do is custom,” says Eagle Sales Manager and third-generation family employee Jason Bailin, adding that sustainability initiatives are only one of the many ways the company has been rapidly evolving. The company relocated 11 years ago from a dingy, 120-year-old factory to its current facility on Evergreen Drive in Appleton and in 2022 added 27,000 square feet to its footprint. In the last five years, Jason says, the company has expanded its customer base from being only about 10% outside of Wisconsin to more than 30% out-of-state business. It has also grown from 50 to 89 employees and hired an HR specialist to focus on recruiting.
Jason says Eagle has been involved in youth apprenticeships for three decades and has a high employee retention rate that is especially beneficial given that so many workers joined the firm as young as 16.
“It’s been a major stepping stone for recruitment and retention, and our in-house machinist trainee program is [something] a lot of companies don’t have,” he says.
Jared says inspiring youth and investing in education have long been part of the company’s ethos. He is passionate about helping kids in the Fox Valley understand what goes on within the walls of the manufacturing facilities they may pass by car every day. Whether it’s bringing students in for youth apprenticeships or reaching out to high school tech education departments, Eagle Performance Plastics has invested heavily in efforts to demystify manufacturing in the New North region.
“The average person driving on the highway has no clue,” Jared says. “If they saw what we were doing, what some of our customers are doing, they’d be amazed.”
Not your average workplace
While Jared and Jason Bailin are proud of their clean, bright, modern manufacturing facility, which will be recognized by Insight in November as one of Wisconsin’s Best Places to Work in Manufacturing, it’s a family history of art collecting and a passion for Fox Valley history that sets the company’s sparkling headquarters apart.
Inspired by the Bailin family’s deep roots in Appleton, Eagle Performance Plastics names all of its rooms, machines and plant floor workspaces after Fox Valley people and landmarks. These include Hearthstone, Houdini, Lawrence and Kamen, to name just a few. The CNC machine “Billy” is named for actor Willem Dafoe, a childhood friend of the family.
“He was known as Billy,” Jared recalls.
Another childhood memory of Jared’s is living in an old house filled with his parents’ art collection. His mother had an art degree from UW-Madison and liked to paint, including a portrait of her husband that today adorns a conference room at Eagle Performance Plastics. The Bailins’ collection was vast and diverse, Jared says: A Pablo Picasso plate once hung precariously above the family’s kitchen sink, “collecting grime.”
Today, many of the pieces from the family collection that aren’t what Jared describes as “really weird” grace the walls of Eagle Performance Plastics. In fact, he says gallery wall space was an essential part of the design considerations when Eagle constructed its current facility.
“Most offices have generic art from, you know, a furniture store,” Jared says. “Why put boring things in there? Go for stuff that has some kind of meaning.”
