Names in the News: PTI Engineered Plastics, Pexco, Weatherchem and Sumitomo DemagNames in the News: PTI Engineered Plastics, Pexco, Weatherchem and Sumitomo Demag

First to PTI Engineered Plastics (Macomb, MI), which serves the medical, defense, aerospace, transportation, electronics and consumer products industries with its injection molding and assembly operations. The company's success drew the attention of producers of Today in America, a show hosted by former professional football quarterback Terry Bradshaw. This show showcases positive stories of successful U.S. manufacturing businesses, and is featured on the FOX and CNN television stations, The Discovery Channel, and others.

Today in America visited the PTI facility in December 2010 and there filmed and interviewed Mark Rathbone, CEO; Kurt Nerva, president and John Budreau, director of new business development.  The focus of the piece was to highlight how PTI's use of modernization and innovation in its facility helps it reduce cost and streamline operations to remain an efficient and profitable company even in challenging times.

Watch the full 5-minute video of the show here: http://www.teampti.com/videos.html. You'll see a very clean processing facility and hear about the company's proprietary technology for developing and making tooling built to make the number of parts required, but not over-engineered (and over-priced).

This isn't Bradshaw's first experience with the plastics industry as he also was a speaker at the Society of the Plastics Industry's (SPI; Washington DC) Machinery, Molders, and Moldmakers division meeting in May 2007 in Tucson, AZ.

At Pexco (Atlanta, GA), which designs, extrudes and fabricates standard and custom plastic products for the aerospace, retail, traffic safety, medical, lighting and fence industries, Joseph Joyner has been hired as the company's executive VP of sales. Joyner will report to CEO Neil Shillingford, one of our Notable Processors (that article here), and be responsible for managing and fostering performance improvement initiatives within Pexco as well as expanding the company's custom plastics industry reach and market presence.

Joyner brings more than 20 years of experience in sales and manufacturing operations to Pexco, which has been on something of an acquisition tear of late. Previously, Joyner was the executive vice president and general manager of EFP Corporation, a foam packaging processor. Prior to EFP Corporation, Joyner served as vice president of sales and marketing for Chicago-based Wilbert Plastic Services, a custom heavy-gauge thermoformer and injection molder. He also held the position of North American director of sales for custom injection molder Nypro Inc.

Meanwhile, plastic closure molder Weatherchem (Twinsburg, OH) is celebrating a milestone few companies achieve - its 40th anniversary. Albert Weatherhead in 1971 purchased Ankeny Co., a small tooling company, and grew it to become the molding power it is today. The company now known as Weatherchem employs 100 and molds a full range of dispensing closures used in markets spanning from pet food to spices to household chemicals and candy.

At injection molding machine manufacturer Sumitomo (SHI) Demag (Schwaig, Germany), Bernd Tröger has been appointed to head its marketing department. He also will continue to serve as the company's product manager. He joined the company in 1999.