A Russell County company is expanding and projected to add 15 new full-time jobs, according to the Virginia Coalfield Economic Development Authority.
The authority provided a grant of up to $100,000 from its Coalfield Workforce Development and Training Fund to the Russell County Industrial Development Authority.
The new jobs are expected to be created within a four-year period and will exceed original job projections made by the company when it first located in Southwest Virginia, according to the authority. Currently, Polycap LLC employs 41. According to the application, 80 full-time employees are expected to be employed there within four years, with an average full-time wage of $46,000. The total employment number is 15 more than originally projected in 2019 and 39 more than the number of employees there now.
Polycap LLC was recruited to the Lebanon shell building in 2019 by the Russell County IDA and VCEDA. Polycap is the first and only U.S. manufacturing plant for Plasticap, which was based in Toronto, Canada. Plasticap has since moved all of its manufacturing to the Lebanon facility and now operates solely under the Polycap name, VCEDA says.
Polycap manufactures plastic caps and closures for the food, personal care, household, medical and pharmaceutical industries, using an injection molding process. Examples of its products include plastic caps for cashew and peanut jars, salad dressing bottles, liquid laundry detergent bottles, nutritional supplement jars, juice and beverage bottles and the caps that go over spray cans.
As part of the incentive package to attract the company to Lebanon, VCEDA initially approved an up to $3.373 million loan to the IDA to assist primarily with the build-out of the Lebanon shell building for the project. VCEDA also previously had provided a $1,544,087.44 loan to the IDA for the construction of the shell building.
“At the time of the IDA’s application to VCEDA in 2019, the IDA and Polycap projected 28 full-time jobs within one year, 48 full-time jobs within three years (with an average annual full-time wage of $30,670), and 65 full-time jobs within five years (with an average annual full-time wage of $31,398),” VCEDA executive director/general counsel Jonathan Belcher said in a statement. “Three years into the project, despite the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the company, which were significant, the company has grown to 41 full-time employees with an average annual full-time wage of $36,000.”