New Recycling Plant in Rogers Creates 350 Jobs

A Florida-based recycling company will hire more than 350 people for its new headquarters and processing facility in Rogers, the company’s president and CEO said Wednesday.

At a news conference at the plant, Ron Whaley with NextLife Asset Recovery Services said it invested more than $10 million in the facility, a 252,000-SF former warehouse at 1300 N. Dixieland Road.

NextLife makes plastic resins from recycled materials for a wide variety of applications, including consumer and commercial products. The company also helps other businesses with their own recycling initiatives and marketing strategies.

The company, a subsidiary of NextLife Enterprises LLC, also has a recycling facility in Frankfort, Ky.

At the news conference, Gov. Mike Beebe, Rogers mayor Greg Hines and Raymond Burns, president and CEO of the Rogers-Lowell Area Chamber of Commerce, welcomed Whaley and NextLife to Northwest Arkansas.

After the news conference, Whaley said since the plant began operations about five weeks ago, it’s been processing about 1 million pounds of material each week.

“And we’ve just been ramping up slowly,” he said. “We’re nowhere near full capacity.”

Whaley said 100 million pounds of material processed is the equivalent of saving 550,000 barrels of oil.

“We work with our suppliers to help them take material that may have been previously put in a landfill, and we actually turn it into a valuable resource for them,” he said. “We own technology that allows us to clean it, process it and turn it back into virginlike materials that are then turned back into products here in North America and around the world.

“The use of our plastics versus virgin plastic decreases our customers’ carbon footprint by 70 percent.”

NextLife was looking for a site for another facility, and was considering several other states when Arkansas economic development officials contacted the company.

“We looked at several places, but the coordination between the local chamber, city, county and state really is what got us here, that and the work force,” Whaley said. “A lot of people are looking for good jobs and meaningful employment, so it was really a combination of things that brought us here.”

He said NextLife’s suppliers are located throughout the country, and include manufacturers, retailers and grocery chains — “almost anyone who creates waste.”

“More and more people are calling us and saying, ‘Hey, is there some way I can save some money? I want to be sustainable,'” he said.

“But sustainability really comes down to improving the bottom line. If you can take something that you were paying to bury and get someone to pay you for it, it works well. It’s good for the earth, it’s good for the U.S. and ultimately it’s good for profits.”