Local manufacturer takes hit from tariff hike

Loopy Lupine has provided Alaska restaurants with locally made paper products since 2010.

By Chloe Pleznac Homer News • May 7, 2025 2:30 am

Tags: Homer, Local Business, Local News, Tariffs

If you’ve ever ordered a coffee in Homer, you’ve most likely sipped from a Loopy Lupine paper cup. The cups — adorned with art by local artists or sometimes customized with brightly colored logos — have delighted tourists and locals alike and are sold and distributed to businesses across the state, including in Seward, Fairbanks and Kodiak.

For owner and operator Dale Banks, sustainability is important. He opened his first business in 1997, called Loopy Lupine Recycled Products. In 2009, he built the production facility that now houses Loopy Lupine Distribution.

Banks also works as a distributor for local restaurants. He helps supply them with compostable options for takeaway food containers (inspired, he said, by seeing a proliferation of plastic foam products throughout the community) and things like “green cleaning” and paper straws.

The cups he produces are made using paper from sustainably harvested forests, and the paper is coated with PLA, a compostable polymer made from renewable corn.

While the “LoopyCups” are made locally in a production facility in Kachemak City, Banks orders the paper to make the cups in bulk from China. The cost of importing is ballooning, however, due to the tariffs President Donald Trump enacted earlier this year, Banks said in an April 28 interview.

On his last paper order, which cost about $26,000 in product, Banks said he was forced to pay around an additional $12,000 “basically out of pocket” in the form of a tariff. Now that Trump has raised the tariffs further, to 145%, Banks would be forced to pay around an additional $36,000 on a $25,000 paper order.

Additionally, the last container was held in China for an “additional exam” slowing the shipping process and affecting his production. This is unusual and has only happened once for him since he began making international orders in 2010.

Banks said the tariffs are affecting previous purchases too. Last year, he ordered a piece of machinery to replace an aging machine. When he was originally shopping for cup production machines to equip his business, he looked both domestically and internationally and found “more localized” production machines in Asia. The replacement machine is now sitting in China, on hold, until Banks can afford the tariff to ship it.

Banks said he’s tried twice over the years to purchase his bulk paper domestically but has found “no equivalent choice in America.” The second time was somewhat recently, meaning that he was still making the transition back to his former supplier in China when the tariffs hit. He estimates he has about half of his current order left before he’ll be forced to purchase more paper. If the tariffs don’t go down, he’ll be faced with either raising his prices or shutting down production completely.

Currently, a case of 1,000, 12-ounce paper cups costs a business owner $139, roughly 14 cents a cup. With the rising costs, Banks would be forced to raise prices between $30 and $45 a case, potentially raising cup costs to 18 cents.

For now, he says it’s just a waiting game.

Reach reporter Chloe Pleznac at chloe.pleznac@homernews.org