The History of Jim Borg, currently DBA PakTech, and Oregon Precision Industries

In 1981, Jim Borg and his family moved back to his native Eugene, Oregon both to improve their quality of life, as well as to pursue his dream of making a plastic injection molding business. In Southern California, Jim and his wife Judie lived happily for 20 years, raising two young kids.

Jim Borg was schooled at UC Irvine and was working toward completing his doctorate in math and social sciences. Close to completing his degree, he was also working in the molding business, cutting metal molds for many different types of products. Enjoying the precision involved, he became more and more interested in the business of plastic injection molding. With the backing of friends and family, Jim decided to take a leap of faith and more back home to Oregon.

In 1981, Jim bought a small facility and for several years grew his business creating metal and aluminum molds for customers. While primarily a molding shop, Jim also incorporated smaller injection molding presses in order to produce small volumes and small projects. During these early years, Jim focused on creating precision molding, perfecting the injection molding process, and of course, how to do business.

The first ten years involved a move to a larger facility and going from a five person employment base to about 20 people. Oregon Precision Industries was making molds and shipping them to larger injection molding facilities, as well as making some parts in-house. The work at the time was a ‘custom’ molding work, as basically OPI was a ‘sub-contractor’ for large companies needing various plastic pieces. Some earlier clients included Sony, HP, Rosen, and PSC.

Some time in 1991, a local dairy approached OPI with a parts request, but didn’t really know ‘how to do it’. They basically told Jim, “We want to sell milk to Costco, in something other than a box.” With an eye for designing molds as well as various plastic pieces, Jim created the first Twin Pack handle for milk gallons. This was the beginning of the plastic handle business, and a product offering that was a niche, and not just a fad. With the design finalized and offered as a packaged product in Costco, Jim knew he was on to something unique.

The ‘club’ stores were just coming into the scene around this time also, and Jim realized that his handles could be utilized for all types of beverage lines. He patented the design, and realized that if there was a machine to apply the handles, he could sell more handles! He and his rapidly growing team began quickly working on a way to automate the application process and developed a simple yet effective machine that applied the TwinPak handle to two milk gallons in one single motion.

Once this project was up and running, Jim hit the road with his “salesman” hat on, and approached national juice companies with the hopes of selling them TwinPak handles for their large juice bottles.

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