A Look Behind the Steel Door of D&J Plastics, Inc. (continued)

Manufacturers use different recipes to control the consistency of your plastic baits from soft to medium to super firm. But the quality of these materials can also have an affect on the odor of your baits. D&J Plastics uses only the highest quality base materials to ensure no unwanted or unusual scents are imparted to the baits they produce and they inspect each and every bait to ensure it was properly molded before putting them into the packaging.

Those branches, together with discarded baits get mulched then shipped off to other industries for repurposing.

If a bait fails inspection, it is tossed into a recycle pile along with the feeder branches and other discarded/defective baits. These leftovers are then ground into plastic mulch and sent to manufacturers in other industries for re-purposing. One such destination is to sneaker manufacturers!

After baits are separated from the central branch and pass inspection, then it's time for packaging and sorting into shipping boxes.

Scott shows us a box of baits ready for packaging.

D&J Plastics has entire warehouses full of other manufacturers' bait packages so once a batch has made it through production and quality inspection, the next step is packaging. Just like quality inspection, all packaging is done by hand to ensure the right number of baits in each color and size make it into the proper retail packaging. It is a seemingly painstaking process, but one that's necessary to ensure everything is right before shipping. Dennis Montgomery told us he's looked into several different automated solutions for this final step, but nothing beats the process he's laid forward to get the baits from the production machines through into packaging, and eventually, their shipping boxes.

Only the actual injection process is mechanized. Everything else at the factory is done by hand. Janice (left) is one of the vital cogs in D&J's machinery overseeing much of the back room operations.

Mike Valster explaining the color mixing process.

Inspired? Intrigued? Interested in starting your own soft bait company and leveraging a company like D&J Plastics to get started on your way to selling the next hot bait in the bass fishing world? Hold onto that entrepreneurial spirit. It's not easy, nor is it cheap to start from scratch. Prototyping of your bait from concept, to sketch, to initial molds, to final production molds is a big investment and can cost anywhere from seven thousand to over ten thousand dollars($7,000-$10,000) depending on the complexity of your mold.

Color options are limited only by imagination.

Left over material after a run of baits.