A mix of clouds and sun. High 84F. Winds SSE at 5 to 10 mph..

Mostly cloudy. Low around 65F. Winds light and variable.

Honey is high on the list of preferred sweeteners for a hot cup of tea in the afternoon or at bedtime.

And what better, more Winnie-the-Pooh way to serve it, than from a squeezable, bear-shaped bottle?

An innovative niche for honey bottles has placed Lawrence County on the national map as a hub for where the cute plastic bear-shaped containers are manufactured.

Container Services Inc., which makes honey bottles of various sizes and shapes including the bears, is based in Hillsboro, Kansas, where it got its start almost 29 years ago. Its second plant in Neshannock Township, which opened a year ago, is up and running full steam, with plans to eventually expand.

Owner, co-founder and CEO Darrell Driggers, 70, is proud to say that his company, while growing within the United States and serving a demanding market by producing 85 million bottles per year, has remained a family business. His son, Brent Driggers, helps to run the operation, and Tom Leihy, director of operations at the Neshannock site, recently moved to the Volant area from Hillsboro to help start up and manage the local operation. Brian Richards of New Castle is the company’s production manager.

The company in September received an Impact Award from the Lawrence County Economic Development Corp. as a new business that has had a positive impact in the county, even before it was fully up and running.

As the Hillsboro company grew, the company saw a need to start a plant somewhere in Eastern United States, Brent Driggers explained. The owners searched Ohio, primarily near Youngstown, for a place that could serve the eastern markets, but nothing was a fit.

Then they found a vacant building in the Neshannock Industrial Park that was ideal for their needs, according to Brent Driggers, executive vice president of the company. Even more ideal was the network of interstate highways that connect New Castle to other parts of the country, he said.

They set up operations here last year and launched the manufacturing the bears and other-shaped honey bottles of various sizes that are found on grocery store shelves throughout the United States.

One technology that they have invented and perfected was the precision printing of the eyes and heart-shaped noses on the bear bottles, Darrell pointed out. “If you look really closely, you’ll be able to see the nostrils.”

How the bottles came to be an in-demand commodity is a story more interesting than how they are made, as shared by Darrell.

He and a partner, LaVerne Esau, started the business in July, 1991, in Hillsboro. Barkman Honey, a honey-packing company, needed a firm to provide bottles for its product. Esau was employed by Barkman, and he and Darrell Driggers as partners started the bottle-making operation next door to Barkman.

At first it was a small factory, occupying an 8,000-square-foot building.

“For two years, all we did was service and sell product to that customer,” Darrell said.

“The appeal was to bring a product out of glass into plastic in those years,” he explained, because the weight of glass and breakage were issues. So they developed a way to make the bottles out of opaque plastic.

The bear-shape was actually designed and produced by someone else in the 1930s as a glass container when honey was first introduced, Darrell explained.

“It has evolved from there. The honey bear is our niche and what we are known for. We probably run about 30 to 35 percent of all bears in the United States, production-wise, maybe even greater,” he said.

As Barkman’s sales grew, so did Container Services Inc. In 2000, its product developed into what is known as PET, a clear-wall technology, and its equipment changed. The company then developed its own technology of printing the eyes and nose on the bear bottle.

“We were the company that developed that technology out of a need,” Darrell said of the face painting, because in 1991, the company workers were dotting on the eyes and noses with magic markers. As the production became higher speed, “it became a real issue for us. So we went out and created the technology with printers, online and high-speed.”

He emphasized that one of the appeals of the bear — and you can’t market them without it — are the eyes and nose.

“The markings are done with a calibrated injected part that we own the tooling for,” he said, adding, “that took us into a different realm.”

“We’ve almost made full circle from glass,” Darrell said. “PET is such a clear material and is preferred on the shelves of the stores to showcase the quality of the honey. So from there, we’ve grown,” he said. About every 11/2 to 2 years, the company has expanded its location in Hillsboro, and it now has 100,000 square feet of space in Hillsboro.

But as the demand for bottles grew into the northeast region of the country, New Castle became a real asset because of freight issues to move the product out of Hillsboro.

Esau has since retired from the partnership. His responsibility had been operations, and Darrell’s function was in sales. In 2013, Darrell bought the stock and the company became 100 percent owner. He ran the firm for about 21/2 years, then Brent became a minority partner.

“It’s been a good career for me,” Darrell said. “We will be celebrating our 30th year next year.”

In Hillsboro, the company has two technologies, a stretch blow for the bears, and an extrusion blow-mold for industrial containers to automotive industry.

The Neshannock plant has two stretch-blow production lines for honey bottles only. Within the next year, Darrell would like to add one more there with possibly a different technology, he said.

“It’s been a great growth strategy for us,” Darrell said. “Opportunities have come and we seized them, and I think we’re blessed by God to have been able to sustain a business like this.”

About 98 percent of its business is primarily within the continental United States, and the company is working with honey-packers across the country, Brent Driggers explained. Container Services Inc. doesn’t bottle the honey, that’s done by the honey-packers. It merely supplies the bottles and sends them off to the packers.

He explained that the PET extrusions for the honey bottles are made in Kansas and shipped to Neshannock, where they are used in the blow-molding of the bottles. The Neshannock site is the company’s first new plant since the firm started up.

The company took over the building that formerly housed New Castle Battery, then later, Axion Battery. It was empty and was used only for storage when Container Services owners found it, loved the location and bought it. Production started last year with one machine, and it has since grown already, Leihy said. “Now we have two.”

The process involves blow-molding a three-inch-long open-ended plastic cap made from PET clear plastic, a thermoplastic polymer resin of the polyester family. The cap is heated up, which makes it pliable and stretchable and it goes through a series of ovens or heating machines that form it into the mold, he explained.

When it comes out in an assembly line, a precisely calculated machine prints the eyes and nose, then the container is blow-tested and examined for leaks and malformations. The perfect ones go into a box that is shipped to honey-packing companies nationwide.

“It all happens really fast,” Leihy said, explaining that there is a four-cavity machine where four bottles come out at a time, and a two-cavity machine that creates two bottles at a time.

The company started out making four different types of containers at the Neshannock site, Leihy said, but it quickly expanded its production to include nine different ones of various shapes and sizes, and all of them are honey containers.

Some are shaped like the traditional, nearly oval beehive-shaped bottles, but “our predominant one is the honey bear,” he said.

The operation takes up little space in the large, immaculate area where vehicle batteries once were manufactured.

Brent pointed out that the decision to open in Neshannock had nothing to do with any available tax breaks or exemptions or any state-offered incentives, and Container Services does not take advantage of those.

“That is not what drew our decision,” he said. “By the time we bought the place (in August 2018), we were growing as fast as we could,” and it was up and running in January 2019.

The company’s largest customer has a co-packer in Ohio, “and for years they wanted us to put a plant in Ohio,” Brent said. “Transportation costs increased and we we wanted to grow the business” and readily serve the eastern seaboard.

The Neshannock site occupies 45,000 square feet of its building and has eight full-time and two part-time employees.

“We’d like to expand our employment,” Leihy said. “We’re set up to keep adding machines. One of the reasons we purchased this building is because it’s expandable.”

Brent said he hopes to have a third line of production running by the end of this year, and after it adds four machines, he anticipates adding on to the building.

The machines in Neshannock Township can produce up to 160,000 bottles a day, depending upon the size of the orders it has, Leihy said.

“Our growth has primarily happened through big packers like Walmart and Costco,” he pointed out.

Brent noted that one of its bottle shapes is sold in Aldi, and that Aldi owns owns the mold. Another honey-packing company, Sweet Harvest, has the exclusive design of a bear holding a honey pot.

And while there is concern nationally about the potential for extinction of the honey bee, Brent doesn’t see that as a concern. Bee farms in the United States and in foreign countries are continuing to grow and send the product to be bottled, he said.

He added that most of the bottles produced by Container Services Inc. are made 25 percent of recycled materials with a PET 1 on the bottom, which means they can be recycled again.

Debbie's been a journalist at the New Castle News since 1978, and covers county government, police and fire, New Castle schools, environment and various other realms. She also writes features, takes photos and video and copy edits.

Email notifications are only sent once a day, and only if there are new matching items.

Your comment has been submitted.

There was a problem reporting this.

Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language. PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK. Don't Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated. Be Truthful. Don't knowingly lie about anyone or anything. Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person. Be Proactive. Use the 'Report' link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts. Share with Us. We'd love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.

Sign up now to get our FREE breaking news coverage delivered right to your inbox.

First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.