Banner Ventures partners with Premier Plastics

Lehi-based Banner Ventures has acquired a significant stake in Salt Lake City’s Premier Plastics LLC, a specialty plastic packaging manufacturer serving the medical, specialty food, retail/consumer goods and nutraceutical industries. Jim Holbrook, who founded Premier in 1989, retained “meaningful” ownership in the company and will continue as CEO, according to a release from Banner Ventures.

Banner Ventures is a private equity and venture capital firm focused on providing partnership capital to family-owned and founder-led businesses in the United States. The partnership will fuel Premier’s “next phase of aggressive expansion,” the release said.

“For the last 32 years, we have built Premier Plastics into a market leader without any outside capital. We have the team, the capability and the market reputation to double our scale in the near term — but to do so I needed to bring in capital partners,” said Holbrook. “After considering all of our options, I felt like Banner was the right partner to continue building on our great legacy and success.”

In addition to Banner Ventures, healthcare and manufacturing industry veterans Ron Labrum and Tony Orsini co-invested via Seventeen Capital LLC with the goal of driving additional growth in the medical device and supply categories.

“In addition to Ron’s experience with Baxter and Cardinal Health, together we have helped scale businesses such as Fenwal and Flexan in the healthcare sector — and we firmly believe in Premier Plastics’ ability to expand and scale to the next level,” said Orsini, who will join the company’s board of directors.

“This transaction is a great example of our partnership capital model,” said Tanner Ainge, managing partner of Banner Ventures. “Premier Plastics has an incredible team, culture and operating history that we are now thrilled to be a part of. Over the next several years we believe Premier is positioned to be the category leader for custom thermoforming solutions and we could not be more excited about partnering with founder and CEO Jim Holbrook and the entire Premier Plastics team.”

“Our expansion plan is already underway,” said Tyler Price, principal of Banner Ventures. “Acquisitions, new geographies, additional investments in production capabilities and a focused outreach to bring on new customers in the medical and consumer categories are all part of the growth strategy.”