For many, the plastics industry provides more than a job: it provides a lifelong career. But for some, the industry provides even more than that: it provides a way of life for generations. That is certainly the case for Caitlin DeMasellis, who grew up in a home that was the original location of her family’s plastics manufacturing machinery shop.

Caitlin DeMasellis, sales associate and system analyst at Ideal Machinery, Inc. in Holly, Michigan, fondly remembers the days in the early 2000s, as a child and then teenager, when her parents would enlist her help at the family-owned and operated business. “I remember my Mom sending me down to the basement and going through all these pallets to find a part. I would bring it upstairs to be checked and packaged. I started there as a kid, helping out.”

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