Tissue Plus is succeeding in finding its way into the tissue industry

Established in 2019, Tissue Plus is a family owned and operated business that specializes in contract converting and private label manufacturing for the At Home and Away from Home markets. In the last Talk Tissue, Brian Uzcategui talked to Marc Cooper, Owner/Founder at Tissue Plus.

Marc has over a 30-year background in the paper industry and a few years ago he had the opportunity to help a mill in Maine with a big problem they had with oversized rolls of paper.

“Being in the buying and selling side of the business I figured that might be a good opportunity to use as a base of operations to help get started. We actually designed machines to handle their oversized rolls.”, says Marc.

To start Tissue Plus, they purchased a building in the summer of 2019 and by the end of the year, they had two slitter rewinders running and making parent rolls. Then the company was converting and selling to other converters.

It was kind of an adventure for Tissue Plus to start converting, because it happened right about February 2020, when the pandemic hit. They did not even have their cranes installed yet, though they were just into a go mode.

“When we started, we were producing basically JRT hardwound towel, multifold towel for the industry, Away From Home markets and then bath tissue for AFH, but at that point people were buying for retail.”

Tissue Plus got very successful and people started to know them, but in the same way sales rose quickly, the phone stopped ringing. So, the company pivoted and ended up converting its operations to a roll converting factory for sanitary wipes.

“We made some modifications to the machines, purchased some additional machines, contracted with outside vendors and basically went 24/7 as much as we could produce for four or five months. That really carried us through the second and third quarters of last year – and even right through into the end of the year. We were very fortunate that we were able to adjust and adapt to meet the needs,” said Marc.

Focusing in that segment, the company’s primary plan to establish their own line got put on hold, Over that period of time, the market has changed so when they were ready to produce finished goods again there wasn’t much of a market.

Tissue Plus also has been really focusing on trying to get some retail in napkin and AFH lines as well. According to Marc, they will be making lunch and dinner napkins, interfold and single fold napkins, as well as other folded products.

Although they also have another business to work on. “We do have a third element to the business too. We have the contract converting that we have been doing and frankly are looking to do more of.”

Currently, the company is doing contract converting, finished goods sales and also contract rewinding and wholesales. “We’ve been selling parent rolls of tissue towel, napkins to other converters as well and we’ve been converting most of thar paper in Maine currently.”

The company has the capacity to ramp up as demand increases, because they invested a lot in equipment so they could manufacture the products right away.

Focusing on the white paper business, Tissue Plus has been offering its services up to companies just looking into roll to roll converting with perforation, embossing and anything they can do to generate income and establish new relationships.

“The pipeline definitely filled up pretty significantly with all the imports which by the way is a huge factor I know the cost of importing parent rolls and finished goods is going through the roof. It will be interesting to see how that impacts domestic production and hopefully will open up some doors for us if we have the parent roll inventory, the capability to make finished goods,” Marc comments. “We maintain pretty significant parent roll inventory and we try to have our product on hand for when people need it.”

Do not miss the complete Talk Tissue with Marc Cooper, Owner/Founder at Tissue Plus: