Plastics News Processor of the Year by Petoskey Plastics

NEW MEMBERS OF THE PLASTICS HALL OF FAME NAMED

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Plastics News Report

Detroit — Four companies have reached the finalist stage for Plastics News’ Processor of the Year Award: MTD Micro Molding, Petoskey Plastics Inc., Plastek Industries Inc. and Trilogy Plastics Inc. The list includes three processors that have been finalists before. Petoskey and Trilogy were finalists in last year’s competition, covering 2016. MTD was a finalist for the 2015 award. Plastek is a newcomer to the finalists’ stage. MTD does micromolding of medical parts in Charlton, Mass. Petoskey Plastics is a blown film manufacturer based in Petoskey, Mich., that specializes in running recycled plastics. Plastek, in Erie, Pa., is a custom injection molder and mold maker of packaging for markets that include See POY, Page 18

Plastics News photo by Jeremy Carroll

Rewarding excellence

MTD Micro Molding PAGE 18

Petoskey Plastics PAGE 19 Paul Keiswetter, president

Plastek Industries PAGE 19

Trilogy Plastics PAGE 20 Bruce Frank, vice president; Steve Osborn, president

Dennis Tully, president

Joseph Prischak, chairman

Industrial blow molder Plastics Group shuts down By Jim Johnson Plastics News Staff A blow molding company with locations in both Ohio and Illinois is shutting down, a move impacting hundreds of workers in two locations. The Plastics Group Inc. has informed workers at its Fremont, Ohio, facility that the location “will be permanently closing.” “I regret to inform you that

Plastics News photos by Don Loepp

Fremont Plastic Products Inc. will be permanently closing. The closing is expected to occur on or about March 5, 2018. As a result of the shutdown, all employees will be laid off on or prior to that date. Layoffs are expected to start on March 5, 2018 or within 14 days thereafter,” reads a notice supplied by the Sandusky County Economic Development Corp. Fremont Plastic Products is a

subsidiary of the Plastics Group, which also has a location in Willowbrook, Ill., that also is closing, according to a report in The News-Messenger of Fremont. The notice listed Dennis Gerrard as interim president and CEO, but he could not be immediately reached for comment Jan. 5. Gerard became CEO following the departure of longtime See Plastics, Page 22

Crown returns to plastics with Signode acquisition By Jim Johnson Plastics News Staff Transit and protective packaging giant Signode Industrial Group Holdings Ltd. is being sold by Carlyle Group to Crown Holdings Inc. in a nearly $4 billion deal. Carlyle, a private equity firm, acquired the firm in 2014 when Illinois Tool Works Inc. sold off the operations for $3.2 billion. The latest sale price is $3.91 billion. Signode supplies transit pack-

aging consumables and equipment. Offerings include strap, stretch and protective packaging. The Glenview, Ill.-based firm has 93 operations in 40 countries and sells products in about 60 countries. While many acquisitions relying on combining operations and cutting costs to help create savings, Crown CEO Timothy Donohue sees this move differently. “This is not a synergy play. This See Signode, Page 23

FINAL WEEK JANUARY 15-16

DETROIT, MI

PLASTICS IN AUTOMOTIVE

2018

TO REGISTER!

PLASTICSNEWS.COM/AUTO SPEAKER INFO ON PG. 23

18 • Plastics News, January 8, 2018

Plastics News photo by Don Loepp

POY Continued from Page 1 personal care and cosmetics. Trilogy Plastics, a custom rotational molder, is based in Alliance, Ohio. Candidates are judged on seven criteria: financial performance, quality, customer relations, employee relations, environmental performance, industry/ public service and technological innovation. Judges are members of the Plastics News editorial staff. Last year’s winner was Dymotek Corp., a custom injection molder in Ellington, Conn. The winning Processor of the Year will be announced at the Plastics News Executive Forum, March 5-7 in Naples, Fla. Before then, Plastics News editor Don Loepp and senior reporter Bill Bregar, who coordinates the annual award, will visit all four companies.

ABOUT THE FINALISTS MTD Micro Molding

TYPE OF MANUFACTURER: Injection molder HEADQUARTERS: Charlton, Mass. SALES: $8 million in 2017

Petoskey Plastics Inc.

TYPE OF MANUFACTURER: Recycling, blown film HEADQUARTERS: Petoskey, Mich. SALES: Projected $140 million in 2017

Plastek Industries Inc.

TYPE OF MANUFACTURER: Injection molder and mold maker HEADQUARTERS: Erie, Pa. SALES: $300 million worldwide in 2017

Trilogy Plastics Inc. TYPE OF MANUFACTURER: Rotational molding HEADQUARTERS: Alliance, Ohio SALES: More than $18 million in 2017

Visit PlasticsNews.com to learn more about the Processor of the Year finalists.

HERE IS A LOOK AT THE FOUR FINALISTS, IN ALPHABETICAL ORDER: MTD Micro Molding

TD has forged a strong identity in the challenging field of micromolding. Some of the parts are so small you can make 520 parts from a single pellet of resin. The company ships 8.5 million parts a year. These are critical tiny parts, molded in ISO Class 8 clean rooms. About 90 percent of the components MTD molds get implanted into the body. Of those, 80 percent are bioresorbable applications, like implantable staples, microscrews, tacks and microplugs. Markets include a range of medical micromolding, for orthopedic, drug delivery, interventional cardiology, wound closure, intravascular, neurological, ear nose and throat, and the growing field of minimally invasive surgery. Few molders can tackle the challenge. About 20 percent of new projects come to MTD as “rescues,” in other words, failed attempts by other molders. Another 30 percent are projects deemed “impossible,” that other molders would not even try to make. MTD builds the miniscule molds in-house and plays an important role with part design. So it shouldn’t be surprising that customers said MTD is a strong partner. One official said his company picked MTD because it was “the most responsive and had the best technical ideas and seemed to have capabilities went far beyond other companies. MTD has very good understanding of Food and Drug Administration regulations,” he said. “It’s an amazing company. The perfect mix of family and professionalism,” said a senior buyer and customer who got to tour MTD’s plant in Charlton. “I was jealous. I wanted to work there.” On the quality side, on-time delivery has steadily improved in recent years to more than 95 percent. The cost of non-quality has gone down dramatically. On MTD’s largest product line, an implantable, bioabsorbable product, the company reports it has molded and shipped more than 17 million parts since production began and averaged only 2.4 returns per year, with zero returns, when the submission was written. MTD included five case studies with its submission. One was titled “Impossible to Possible.” In 1972, Richard Tully founded a mold maker specializing in tiny molds, Miniature Tool & Die Inc. The company began molding small medical parts in 1988. In 1999, Boston Scientific approached

In 2016, MTD Micro Molding added two Sodick injection molding machines, other equipment for automated full production lines and two new pieces of metalworking equipment. Miniature Tool & Die to build a mold for what was then the world’s smallest plastic part. That was the beginning of MTD Micro Molding. Richard Tully retired in 2008, and his son, Dennis Tully, bought out his father and became owner and president. In addition to solid customer relations and quality, MTD also scored good marks on financial performance, employee relations, industry and public service, and technology. MTD is the smallest of the four finalists. The company generated sales of $8 million in 2017, a 10.4 percent increase over 2016. The growth rate over the last four years is 39.4 percent. MTD made Inc. magazine’s list of the 5,000 fastest-growing companies in 2017, for the second time. And the company is about to grow physically, as well, planning to break ground this spring for a 12,000-squarefoot addition to its building in Charlton. The expansion will include a new tooling department, more clean room space, additional storage and a fitness center for the firm’s 32 employees. Finding skilled manufacturing employees is hard enough. Throw in the painstaking detail needed for micromolding, where you need a microscope to see part details, and it becomes a major challenge. MTD claims high employee retention, with average tenure of six years, in an environment of hiring new people in recent years, and 15 years of experience in the medical sector. The total team has more than 400 years of experience in plastics, tooling and the medical device industry, according to the company’s award submission. One mold technician called MTD a “close family,” adding that he enjoys “the work environment along with the level of precision and attention to detail it takes to create the molds we build. They take great care of us at MTD.” MTD has good benefits. And the lit-

tle things matter: Each employee gets a birthday card and a gift, a nice personal touch. Technology is a major part of MTD — and its unique components. The company runs 13 injection molding machines, most of them Sodicks. All of them have robots, other automation and vision systems. The company recently added a vertical rotary Sodick to increase overmolding of the micro parts. In April, MTD accepted the Manufacturing Excellence Award for the small business category at the Worcester Business Journal’s Manufacturing Summit. The company also has hired its first inhouse information technology technician — IT was previously outsourced — to support employees, integrate all molding equipment and get the data online. This year, the company is hiring a research and development engineer focused on bioabsorbables, a new position. A major investment was a Sarix micro EDM system. Sarix equipment can make corners that can measure 5 microns. Charlton is a small town, and MTD plays an outsized role locally, which helped the molder score well in the industry and public service area. MTD and its employees support Red Cross blood drives, host a drop off location for Toys for Tots, and sponsor and donate money to local events and the high school robotics team, among other causes. Employees go to a variety of trade shows and industry events, and MTD exhibits as well. Alex Maroon, project engineer, presented a paper at the Society of Plastics Engineers’ Antec last year on micromolding with bioabsorbables. MTD regularly sends its sales team to medical device companies for “lunch-andlearns,” a critical part of spreading the message about micromolding. MTD was self-nominated by Lindsay Mann, the company’s director of marketing.

In 1999, Boston Scientific approached Miniature Tool & Die to build a mold for what was then the world’s smallest plastic part. That was the beginning of MTD Micro Molding. Richard Tully retired in 2008, and his son, Dennis Tully, bought out his father and became owner and president.

Plastics News photo by Don Loepp

Plastics News, January 8, 2018 • 19

Petoskey Plastics Inc.

The plant floor at the recycler and blown film maker Petosky Plastics Inc. five categories. The criteria of quality and customer relations go hand in hand. Petoskey is set up to give an “in-touch approach” to customers. The company provided the judges with a very detailed report on quality, including a complete list of testing equipment in quality laboratories. Each quarter, a quality management system review meeting is held at every location, including people from support functions like R&D, human resources and sales. Similarly, employees get involved with a preventive and corrective action process, or PCAR. That gives a way to consistently troubleshoot issues — and as a result, the number of average monthly customer concerns has come down. Several customers have given quality supplier awards to Petoskey. Another interesting practice is a new continuity plan, as Petoskey worked with a consultant to maintain consistent operations in case of emergency. Petoskey claims 5,000 customers in 47 countries. That includes 30 Fortune 500 companies. Customers contacted by the Plastics News judges had good things to say. A purchasing official from one customer said his company and Petoskey have a “great relationship.” He said everyone is very accessible, all the way to top management. Petoskey also deals with any problems quickly. Making blown film, and especially the recycled-content variety, requires ongoing major investments in machinery, a strong point for the technological innovation category. Petoskey’s 26 blown film lines have die sizes from 6-30 inches, allowing for lay-flat widths from 12 inches to 120 inches, as well as four custom converting lines and four draw-tape converting lines. The company has launched a platform called Super-

visory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) to link all production and facility support equipment to a single database for storage of process data. Managers get the data customizable dashboards to help them track and improve plant operations and track trends, making the far-flung film company more unified. Petoskey presented a strong mix of both industry involvement and public service in their communities. Jason Keiswetter serves on the board of the Flexible Film and Bag division of the Plastics Industry Association. The plant manager is president of the Northwest Michigan Industrial Association. The company also is active in the Association of Plastic Recyclers. The company stands out in community involvement. In 2017, the company made more than 100 charitable donations. Helping children is a central goal. Petoskey opens its doors to third-graders in its hometown and, last fall, to the Michigan State Police. In September, the company hosted 19 forensic scientists to explain how bags are made and printed, important information because plastic bags often turn up at crime scenes. The film company has solid employee relations, and it starts with a booklet called simply, “Hello & Welcome.” The 21-page booklet tells everything about the company, including the history, community involvement and benefits. It lays out a career path to prospective employees. A major focus is employee retention. Starting this fall, new hires get a “swag bag” full of gifts. A first impression survey is taken after the first day on the job. A check-in survey comes after 60 days of employment. The company pays 100 percent of tuition and works with community colleges to develop specific classes. An employee self-nominated Petoskey Plastics: marketing leader Pam Colby.

Plastics News photo by Don Loepp

lown film and recycling specialist Petoskey Plastics employs 420 at its headquarters and factory in Petoskey, Mich., a plant in Morristown, Tenn., and a recycling and blown film plant in Hartford City, Ind. The company also has a sales location serving the automotive sector in Birmingham, Mich., for its biggest market, custom covers to protect seats and steering wheels and sheets for masking during painting. Other markets reflect the company’s diversity: Grocery, medical, recycling, food, retail, packaging and construction. What does Petoskey do in its total manufacturing space of 500,000 square feet? Make blown film on 26 film extrusion lines with a strong emphasis on closed-loop recycling. Each year the company processes more than 30 million pounds of plastics, including 20 million pounds collected from customers. Petoskey works with customers to bale used plastic film, such as stretch film, linear low density polyethylene and low density PE clear bags, colored bags and packaging. That all gets sent to Hartford City, where it gets recycled into what the company calls GreenPE. GreenPE goes into blown film and bags with 70 percent recycled content sandwiched between two layers of virgin plastic. The Greencore product line includes can liners and recycling bags. Since renovating a former garage door factory in Hartford City in 2007, Petoskey has steadily expanded and added jobs. The latest investment: an $8 million wash line. Petoskey, owned by the Keiswetter family, has been growing rapidly. Sales were $67 million in 2009, and in 2017 reached a projected $140 million, up about 7.5 percent over 2016. Over the last six years, the company has averaged 8 percent annual sales growth, according to its submission. Paul Keiswetter, the president and CEO, and his father, Duke Keiswetter, founded Petoskey Plastics in 1969. The company adopted “green” practices nine years later, beginning to recycle its scrap. The company pioneered closed-loop film recycling in 1992 in response to Michigan’s returnable-bottle law, which was creating demand for bags to hold the recycled bottles and cans. “As a supplier of this product, we knew that the product was being landfilled by the beverage companies,” company officials wrote in the award submission. “We worked with our customers to bale the plastic, then we picked up the baled plastic, credited them for the plastic scrap and put the plastic scrap back into their products, thus creating our first closed-loop system.” Today, Paul’s son, Jason Keiswetter, works with his father as executive vice president. Environment performance is Petoskey’s strongest category in the Processor of the Year hunt. But judges also have high marks for financial performance and the other

Plastek Industries Inc.

tarted by plastics legend Joseph Prischak and now run by his sons, Plastek Industries has grown to become the largest plastics company in the powerhouse plastics region surrounding Erie, Pa., and has operations and impact around the world. Plastek employs about 800 in Erie at its molding and mold making operations. Worldwide, total employment is 1,700 at eight sites in four countries, including Mexico, Brazil and the England. Worldwide sales were about $300 million in 2017. Company officials do not give out specific financial information, but they indicated sales have been increasing. Currency swings can impact total sales, they said. Plastek is a major force in packaging, running more than 350 injection molding machines with clamping forces from 75-950

tons. Some 67 percent of its business is in the personal care market. Plastek molds millions of deodorant sticks, caps, lip balm tubes, cosmetic and other thin-wall parts on multicavity molds that the company builds itself. Multishot molds, stack molds and some turning-stack molds that do inmold assembly, pump out the parts, many of which then go to Plastek’s more than 35 automated assembly machines. Many parts are correctly oriented by the automated systems, which are designed in-house, and placed in a manner customers want for their filling lines. That helped the company score in the technological innovation category. The rest of the molding business is evenly split between food and beverage, medical and home care/industrial. Most of the customers See Plastek, Page 20

Employees working at the injection molder and mold maker Plastek Industries Inc.

Plastics News photo by Don Loepp

20 • Plastics News, January 8, 2018

Trilogy Plastics Inc.

n 1987, Stephen Osborn bought a small 13-person rotational molder in Louisville, Ohio, that was on its last legs, in an aging building by a small stream prone to flooding. Osborn was a Cleveland-based turnaround consultant at Ernst & Ernst, now Ernst & Young. He was looking for a manufacturing business to buy and picked the rotomolder that began more than 100 years ago as Old King Cole Inc. The financial guy had to learn rotomolding. He brought in Bruce Frank, a longtime friend, to handle sales and be a partner. Trilogy generated more than $18 million in sales in 2017. The company runs nine rotomolding machines — seven at its main custom molding plant in Alliance, Ohio, built in 2005, and two at a second plant down the street that is dedicated to high-volume work. The main headquarters factory has four CNC routers, which Osborn said is one of the highest ratios of routers to machines in the rotomolding industry. Since Osborn and Frank bought the company 30 years ago, Trilogy has made money every year. Compounded annual sales growth is more than 13 percent. Markets include retail, industrial, medical, and truck and bus. The company does assembly and foaming. Although the business has been steadily growing, the 20 percent growth in 2017 presented a challenge as Trilogy boosted employment from 160 a year ago to 208 today. Osborn, Trilogy’s president, said about one-third of the workforce has less than one year’s experience. All those new employees presented a challenge to Trilogy’s good record for quality and even safety. But the rotational molder has a strategy to become a world-class company, an effort led by the vice president of operations,

Plastek Continued from Page 19 are Fortune 500 companies, such as Procter & Gamble Co., Unilever, Revlon Inc. and Church & Dwight Co. Inc. The judges gave high grades for the criteria of customer relations, employee relations, industry and public service, technology and quality. It starts with a colorful history. Joe Prischak was a young toolmaker at Penn Erie who left after the company refused to give him a nickel-an-hour raise. He struck out on his own, starting Triangle Tool in 1956. (Plastek ended up buying Penn Erie in the early 1990s.) Plastek Industries followed in 1971 to do molding and assembly. In 1999, the company built its first greenfield site in Mansfield, England, and followed that up with another greenfield plant in Indaiatuba, Brazil, the following year. Another newly built plant in Venezuela opened in 2001, then ran into Hugo Chavez’s socialist revolution; Plastek ended up closing and selling the plant. To reduce transportation costs to customers, Plastek opened a plant in Hamlet, N.C., in 2010. The former Rexam packaging plant had closed. The company opened a plant in Quarétaro, Mexico, in 2015. In mid-2017, Plastek bought the assets of a closed Coveris factory in Anderson, S.C., including about 40 injection molding machines, and moved some of them to

Daren Balderson, a Trilogy veteran and Alliance-area native. Hard work by management and a culture of honesty, openness and mutual respect have paid off. Trilogy’s string of 852 days without a lost-time accident is impressive for rotational molding, which is hard, hot, labor-intensive work. A safe factory is central to the award category of employee relations, one of Trilogy’s strongest. Once a month, each supervisor meets with every single employee privately, oneon-one, in what the company had dubbed a “pulse meeting.” They talk about work. In one meeting, a machine operator mentioned how telescoping magnets that roofers use to pick up errant nails could help Trilogy operators find dropped mold bolts. Management agreed and bought them for all the machines. The informal meetings cover personal topics too: An aging parent. Car problems. Divorce. Things like that can impact workers on the job. The supervisor writes up a brief synopsis, and it gets put into the human resources computer system. Trilogy’s HR director, Holly Blanton, also randomly conducts “stay interviews” — a play on the term “exit interview,” the common exercise that comes too late to answer an employee’s issues. It all adds up to an extraordinary number of “touches” with the people who work in the plant. Employees can move up by learning new skills, through a three-level system that includes pay raises and passing a written test. Trilogy also gives employees a $100 bonus a month for perfect attendance. Trilogy has done even more for its employees since becoming a Processor of the Year finalist last year. Management has added more recognition awards, including weekly top-operator awards for

both molding and finishing, to promote excellence in safety, productivity and attitude. Winners attend a monthly breakfast with Balderson. Pay also increased to reflect improved productivity, and the company’s 401(k) match was more than doubled. For the third year in a row, the company absorbed the total increase in health insurance costs. And — in an innovative effort that hits both the criteria of employee relations and the industry and public service — employees can “work off” points assessed for missed attendance by serving local charities such as the Salvation Army, Habitat for Humanity and Alliance for Children & Families. Many employees who don’t have attendance issues also volunteer, as does management. The judges also gave Trilogy good grades for customer relations and technology. For customers, Trilogy has an on-time-delivery record of more than 99 percent. The company closely tracks customer complaints and follows through to find the cause of the problem. Complaints have been cut in half from 6.8 per month in 2014 to just 3.6 percent in 2016, even as sales have increased.

Contacted by the Plastics News judges, customers praised Trilogy for never missing deliveries and dealing immediately with any quality issues. One customer said Trilogy is flexible and nimble. The company has “often been one step ahead of us in anticipating our needs,” he said. Trilogy continues to invest in technology as it moves to be as close as rotational molding can get to closed-loop production. The business uses the IRT technology of infrared sensors to monitor temperatures on the surface of the mold and make adjustments to the molding cycle. Another technology, Rotolog, uses sensors inside the mold. EZ Logger also measures in-mold temperatures. Trilogy also added production monitoring at each machine, and several monitors that show cycle times and other information are placed at operator stations. The display turns yellow if production falls slightly behind the target and red if it gets way behind. Long term, the plan is to network every machine into a comprehensive monitoring system for all machines that will be available on every work station and on large flat-screen monitors throughout the plant.

other plants. Joe Prischak retired in 2002, although he remains chairman. He turned day-today operations over to his sons. Dennis is president and CEO, Daniel is vice president of manufacturing for the United States, Douglas is vice president of global tooling and engineering, and Donald is vice president of sales. The brothers all grew up in the plant, got plastics degrees, and they all went through a mold-making apprenticeship. It shows that molds are Plastek’s roots, and a very important part of the company. Douglas Prischak said the company builds its molds to run forever and offers free mold maintenance on molds it designs, makes and runs. Plastek has always maintained a mold-making apprenticeship program. Joe still comes in several days a week. He also thinks up new ideas, such as HaVACo Technologies Inc., founded in 2012, a business that makes plastic components for the heating, ventilation and air conditioning systems. Companywide, Plastek molds more than 11 billion parts per year; more than 2 billion that are assembled. In its submission, the company claims to have less than 100 defective parts per million. Each molding operation has its own dedicated tool shop, staffed on all three shifts. Customers backed up the quality claims. Plastek’s expertise in tooling is important, they said. “They’re top-notch in mold building, one of the top mold builders in North America and also glob-

ally,” said a buyer at one customer. The company is an expert on manufacturability, and always looking to reducing costs and streamline the process, he said. Since starting “Injection Molding 101” in 2003, Plastek has hosted hundreds of customers at its Erie headquarters plant for courses that include hands-on work with molds and molding presses. The molder won the Plastics Caps & Closures Innovation Award last year at a Plastics News conference, for a childproof closure for a container on Arm & Hammer laundry pods, from Church & Dwight. The lid also won an Innovation Award at the EastPack trade show. Unilever recognized Plastek with a Partner to Win award for Value Creation. The consumer products giant has named Plastek a Partner to Win in 2011, 2013 and 2015, in several other categories. Employees play a key role on the fastpaced production floor. Plastek takes good care of them. Each facility includes an exercise room, and a walking program awards trips as prizes. Employees can join a local fitness club for just $8 a month, with the rest paid by the company. Started a dozen years ago, Plastek’s wellness program is an outstanding feature. Free to all employees — even temporary workers and their families — Wellness Works gives people access to two full-time nurses who have on-site health clinics and a doctor who comes in three days a week. Employees also can earn lower health insurance rates if they participate in Wellness

Works, including a physical, health screening, measurement of body mass index and the percentage of body fat and weight, an eye exam and participation in a wellness survey. They get more points for taking action to improve health, like quitting smoking and increasing physical fitness. A 95-person committee coordinates a safety program at work. Plastek is a big supporter of education. Joe Prischak and his wife, Isabelle, set up a $2 million endowment to help all Plastek employees and their families pay for college in Erie and the North Carolina plant in Hamlet. Prischak also was one of the Erie-area plastics leaders that convinced Penn State Erie to create its plastics engineering technology program. That has paid back in spades, as many graduates stay in town and keep Erie a strong plastics manufacturing area. He decided to set up a similar program at Richmond Community College in Hamlet for its employees there. And he started one at the University of Bratislava in Slovakia, his family’s home country. Plastek supports the American Heart Association, March of Dimes and American Cancer Society. Prischak also set up a foundation, called Africa 6000 International, to do something truly extraordinary: build water wells and irrigation projects in Africa. He has visited Africa several times and recalls being heartbroken over seeing children sick and dying because of waterborne illness. Plastek was self-nominated by Matthew Jeglinski, sales manager.

An employee at rotomolder Trilogy Plastics Inc.