A McMinnville nursery used a $1 million grant from the Tennessee Department of Agriculture to build a plastic pot production facility.
Hale & Hines Nursery President Terry Hines said the facility is a 40×80 building that contains a 1,500-ton injection mold machine that will produce plastic pots in which trees can grow.
“It will allow us, as we are running production, to increase our pot and plot production area because we are gonna be expanding that, and then also we’ll be potting up the trees, of course, in the pots that we are producing in-house,” Hines said. “We are making them a little bit cheaper than we can buy them from Italy.”
Hines said one shortcoming of the COVID pandemic, a lack of plastic production as most plastic products have to be shipped from overseas. Hines said keeping the plastic pots products in-house is crucial as pots play a significant role in the tree nursery business.
“Producing a tree in a container is just another way to produce the same tree,” Hines said. “It’s a lot more portable. You know, you can take it out of the production area, and you know, ship it the next day. So it doesn’t take the time it takes to harvest field-grown material.”
Hines said he hopes to get more injection mold machines in the facility to further boost production. Hines said the production facility is currently only producing pots for their nursery.
“We don’t know what that need will be, but we have seen some interest and we can produce a lot more pots with this one machine that we are gonna need in a calendar year,” Hines said. “So we are gonna have to see how that all sorts itself out.”
Hines said he was appreciative to receive the funding to build a production facility.
“Well, it feels really good cause we pay a whole lot of taxes, and it’s nice to see a little bit come back to help us further our production and do things a little more efficiently,” Hines said.
Hines said the production facility uses 100 percent recycled plastic to produce the pots. Hines said the nursery also has a buyback program to make sure pots can be reused more than once.
Hines said the Hale & Hines Nursery began in 1978 with a focus on growing various types of trees for shade.
