Manufacturing
Rugosa Trading’s Green Peanuts
By By Linn Parish October 28, 2010
As it turns out, you can manufacture in Spokane Valley for peanuts.
Rugosa Trading Inc., a Blaine, Wash.-based packaging-fulfillment company, has started a division in Spokane Valley that makes biodegradable and compostable packaging products, similar in look and function to Styrofoam packaging peanuts. The division, called One Earth Starch, is located in a 5,000-square-foot manufacturing space in the 70-building, 600-acre Spokane Business & Industrial Park at 3808 N. Sullivan.
John Dill II, general manager of One Earth Starch, says Rugosa Trading elected to open a facility in the Spokane area primarily because labor and leased space cost less and because vendor support is closer than it would have been in Blaine.
The increased cost to start would have been $30,000 to $50,000 if Rugosa had opened the division in Blaine, Dill notes, adding that the company has invested about $300,000 in the Spokane Valley facility.
One Earth Starch currently employs two people and sends out two truckloads of product a month. The company expects to ramp up to eight employees within two years, Dill says.
The biodegradable packaging peanuts are 80 percent corn starch and 20 percent potato starch and are comparable in cost to Styrofoam, Dill explains. The major difference is that the conventional packaging peanut takes 400 years to disintegrate, while a One Earth Starch peanut dissolves in water in minutes.
Rugosa Trading has operated in Blaine for more than 30 years and is owned by Len and Marsha Beckett.