Polychem Brand Guidelines: The Mentor, Ohio Strapping Maker Renamed Greenbridge in 2021

Polyester, polypropylene and cord strapping.

Polychem was a strapping maker based in Mentor, Ohio, and the name no longer trades: since 2021 the company has been called Greenbridge. Its old website, polychem.com, now carries a single notice that “Polychem is now” Greenbridge, with a link to the new site. Greenbridge says the business was founded in 1974 as Polychem; when the private equity firm The Sterling Group bought it in 2019, its announcement described Polychem as a family business since the 1980s, and the trade publication Resource Recycling said the same.

The product was strapping: the plastic band pulled tight and sealed around bundles, cartons and loaded pallets. Greenbridge says Polychem soon gained a reputation for having the broadest line of polyester, polypropylene and cord strapping in the industry, and that tools, equipment and accessories were added alongside. The Sterling Group, announcing its purchase in Houston on 15 March 2019, called Polychem a leading maker of polyester and polypropylene strapping in the North American securement packaging industry, serving food and beverage, consumer packaged goods and industrial customers.

What set Polychem apart in the trade press was recycling. Greenbridge says that in 1998 Polychem set up Evergreen as its recycling division, to produce recycled PET. Resource Recycling reported in March 2019 that Polychem, “a manufacturer of recycled polyester strapping,” was vertically integrated, running its own plant that recycled post-consumer PET into feedstock for its own extrusion lines and for sale to outside manufacturers. In April 2021 the same publication described the plant at Clyde, Ohio, as supplying coloured PET flakes and pellets for strapping production, and food-grade recycled PET for outside packaging makers.

Acquisitions, then a new name.

Polychem grew by buying other businesses. Greenbridge says that acquisitions in the United States and Mexico widened its range to cornerboard, strap accessories, power tools, equipment and complete systems, and that in 2003 it took a majority interest in OMS Americas, a maker of strapping systems. After the 2019 purchase by The Sterling Group, which Resource Recycling reported on 20 March 2019 with terms undisclosed, the company says it acquired Dynaric in 2019, adding printing on strap, and jumbo-coil capacity in 2020.

The change of name came on 22 April 2021, Earth Day. Resource Recycling reported that day that, as part of an Earth Day celebration with speeches, food and music at company locations, Polychem was changing its name to Greenbridge and that Evergreen Plastics was being renamed Evergreen. By July 2021 the same publication was describing Evergreen as part of a company “formerly known as Polychem Corporation.” Greenbridge says the new name was chosen to reflect its work on sustainability for customers in North America that want to follow the principles of the circular economy.

The two businesses then appear apart. The Sterling Group’s portfolio page lists Greenbridge, headquartered in Mentor, under 2019, and lists Evergreen separately under 2021, describing it as a recycler of post-consumer PET bottles.

Greenbridge today presents a wider business than the old Polychem. Its catalogue runs from plastic and cord strapping and cornerboard to hand tools, arch strapping machines, orbital wrapping and complete systems, and it offers field service, tool repair, head rebuilds and training. It lists its brands as Dynaric, Itatools, Caristrap, Caristrap Europe and OMS by Greenbridge. Its contact page names executive offices and manufacturing in Cleveland, customer service and manufacturing in Mentor, an OMS and distribution centre in Green, Ohio, manufacturing in Clyde, and sites in Virginia Beach, in Mexico, in Croatia for Caristrap Europe and in Italy for Itatools.

How strapping makers present themselves.

The makers in this guide sell much of their range to people who use tape and strapping at work: warehouse teams sealing cartons, packers securing pallets, contractors masking a wall or sealing a duct. Their catalogues tend to be organised around jobs and materials. Shurtape’s industrial website, for example, sorts its range by trade — construction, HVAC, packaging, marine — while IPG lists pressure-sensitive and water-activated tapes, stretch and shrink films and packaging machinery side by side.

That gives the category a recognisable set of pictures for a designer to study: rolls of tape on their cardboard cores, often stacked by colour or width; cartons running through a case sealer at the end of a packing line; steel or plastic strapping drawn tight around a loaded pallet with a hand tool or a machine; and close-ups of an adhesive face or a cut edge. Some makers, Shurtape among them, give their trade tapes short codes of letters and numbers rather than names.

The trade also meets in person. PMMI’s Pack Expo shows in the United States, interpack in Düsseldorf and FachPack in Nuremberg, which held its 2025 edition in September, gather makers of packaging materials, tapes, strapping and the machines that apply them together, and a maker’s stand there is one of the places its identity is seen at full size.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it now, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word. The colours and typefaces shown are our own unofficial interpretation, not any maker’s official palette.

From a family name to a green one.

Polychem is a case of a brand retired on purpose. The company did not close: it changed its name, and it chose Earth Day to do it. In April 2026 Greenbridge marked five years under the new name with a post describing the businesses it brought together: Polychem, which it says was recognised for a broad product line; Dynaric, which it says became known for polypropylene strap; Caristrap, which it says expanded its polyester strapping; and OMS Americas, which it credits with systems and automation. It calls the combined company “One Greenbridge.”

The new name says what the company wanted to stress. Greenbridge’s mission statement speaks of strapping and packaging solutions that “drive sustainability,” and its sustainability page describes collecting customers’ used PET, polypropylene strap, cord, paper and stretch wrap, buying back scrap strap, and making cornerboard from recycled paperboard; those are the company’s own descriptions. Greenbridge, by the company’s account, is a name meant to point to the circular economy.

A domain note for anyone looking up the old name: polychem.com belongs to the strapping company and points to Greenbridge, but other sites using the Polychem name, among them polychemcorp.com, belong to unrelated businesses.

For a design guide, Polychem shows how a manufacturer can retire a long-standing trade name and move its customers to a new one built around a single idea, here recycling, while keeping the older product brands it acquired. Compare Signode, a strapping group that also gathered acquired brands under one master name, and Samuel Strapping, another strapping maker. For this guide we use a green, a deep pine and a gold with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Polychem’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.