First look: Industry News & Analysis 21722

Gerresheimer buys Wilden

One of Europe’s most renowned injection molders, Wilden AG (Regensburg, Germany), was acquired early this month by Düsseldorf-based Gerresheimer Group GmbH, a firm with deep roots in the glass packaging industry that has in the last years greatly expanded its plastics processing operations.The Wilden acquisition makes Gerresheimer a medical industry powerhouse.

Wilden ownership was split by the Wilden brothers, Hans and Bert. The molder has three processing facilities in Germany plus ones in Switzerland, Italy, Sweden, the Czech Republic, the U.S., China, Bulgaria, Dubai, and Mexico, employs almost 2300, and had about €240 million annual sales. Almost 20% of its 65,000m² of processing area is cleanroom; the firm has more than 450 injection molding machines.

Neither firm is offering much comment on the purchase price, but in October Gerresheimer took a €300 million credit to finance the purchase. Private equity firm Blackstone Group acquired Gerresheimer in 2004. Wilden is active in a number of industries including medical/pharmaceutical, automotive, E/E, and cosmetics packaging.

Gerresheimer alone had 21 production facilities in Asia, the Americas, and Europe, with about 6000 employees and annual sales of more than ?600 million, most reaped in the pharmaceutical and cosmetic packaging markets. In late 2005 it acquired Denmark’s Superfos Group, a €25 million/yr processor of closures and packaging.

In Brief

Macchi moves NA office

Blown- and cast-film equipment maker Macchi SpA (Venegono Inferiore, Italy) has relocated its North American office to Gainesville, GA near Atlanta from the previous location in Canada. Alessandro Macchi says the company produced more than 80 blown- and cast-film systems last year.

M&G seeks divestiture

The world’s second largest PET supplier, M&G Group, seeks to divest its two PET preform and bottle blowmolding companies in Italy, which represent only 9% of total group revenue.

Teijin to expand again

Dutch aramid fibers supplier Teijin Twaron BV is planning its fourth capacity expansion in the last six years to meet 10%/yr demand growth for its high performance Twaron fibers.

TRW’s new China plant

TRW Automotive’s (Livonia, MI) Fasteners and Components division opened its new injection molding plant in Langfang, China, with 20 injection molding machines and plans to have 100 employees by the end of 2007.

L-com opens in Suzhou

L-com (North Andover, MA), a supplier of cable assemblies and connectors, has opened a fully-owned subsidiary in Suzhou, China, including injection molding and assembly.

Jabil nabs Green Point

Jabil Circuit Inc., a top-tier electronics equipment supplier, will acquire cellular phone casings molder Taiwan Green Point Enterprises Co. Ltd. for about $880 million. The acquisition includes nine Asian plants, seven in China and one each in Taiwan and Malaysia.

Lear unloads N.A. interiors to Ross: C&A, Delphi next?

Finally agreeing to terms, Tier One automotive supplier Lear (Southfield, MI) has reached an agreement with automotive financier Wilbur Ross to exit interiors, selling off a controlling stake of that segment of its North American business, after executing a similar deal with Ross in Europe.

Lear will transfer the interior unit’s assets and $25 million in cash to new joint-venture partners WL Ross & Co. LLC and Franklin Mutual Advisers LLC, retaining a 25% equity interest in the business, which will be called International Automotive Components Group North America LLC (IAC). Lear estimates the North American unit has annual sales of approximately $2.5 billion.

In October, Lear sold a majority stake in its European interior business to Ross, who also purchased fellow Tier One interior supplier Collins & Aikman’s (C&A; Southfield, MI) European assets. Industry watchers speculate that IAC is targeting C&A’s North American business and could also be considering the interior’s unit of Delphi (Troy, MI), which has expressed interest in winding down its interior business.

On Nov. 14, C&A announced that it would sell its operations piecemeal, or in their entirety.

Sonoco finalizes acquisitions and more

Packaging supplier Sonoco (Hartsville, SC) completed the purchase of Clear Pack Co. (Franklin Park, IL), and said it will add blowmolding capabilities this year.

Sonoco has closed 18 deals since 2004, with six signed in 2006. Clear Pack, which has annual sales of $45 million, thermoforms and extrudes plastic containers for the food-service industry, including single-serve condiment and produce containers.

Sonoco also reached a supply agreement with the Ross Products division of Abbott Laboratories to supply it with 8-ounce blowmolded bottles starting in March 2007. Sonoco will add blowmolding to its Wausau, WI facility by the end of the first quarter of 2007, with plans to start a new plant in Columbus, OH by the end of 2007, with multiple blowmolding machines.

Sonoco also started a protective packaging line in Kaiping, China for an exercise equipment manufacturer and is developing a similar line for a European appliance maker in Turkey. Sonoco also will close two Chicago-area injection molding facilities, effective Jan. 31, affecting some 50 employees. These operations molded plumbing-related plastic components. The closures are part of Sonoco’s initiative to reduce costs in 2007, with the planned shuttering of 12 plants globally.

To the Victor go the spoils

In a move to better serve two of its largest customers and pushing toward its goal of $250 million in revenue by 2010, custom molder Victor Plastics (Victor, IA), has purchased Kincses Tool & Mold (Flora, MS) which comes with 50 employees, 18 injection molding machines, and a 40,000-sq-ft plant 100 miles or less from Victor clients, Viking Range Corp. (Greenwood, MS) and Whirlpool Corp. (Oxford, MS), compared to over 400 miles to Victor’s three Iowa plants.

Scott Pope, Victor’s VP of sales and marketing, said the company plans to expand the new Flora facility, making it a 24/7 operation, adding equipment, and doubling the number of employees within the first year.

Victor, which has 143 injection molding machines ranging from 30 to 3000 tons spread between 440,000 ft² of manufacturing in Victor, Kalona, and North Liberty, IA, also has plans to add blowmolding in the first quarter of 2007. The company serves the appliance, automotive, beverage, consumer product, furniture, medical, recreational vehicle, and telecommunications markets.

MHT hit with fine, strikes back with expansion

Some five years after PET preform mold market leader Husky took it to court for stealing intellectual property, Mold & Hotrunner Technology AG (MHT; Hochheim, Germany) has been ordered by the Supreme District Court in Frankfurt to pay a fine of about ?7 million plus interest (more than $11 million) to Husky (Bolton, ON).

Husky accused MHT’s founders, former Husky employees, of stealing CAD files related to 48-cavity horizontal preform molds that were manufactured by MHT until autumn 2001. MHT was founded in December 1996.

The right to appeal this decision has been denied by the courts, but MHT may challenge this denial and MHT Marketing Manager Ralph Gauss says the firm is considering doing just that.

“This judgment certainly isn''t good news and the amount of damages came as a surprise,” says Christoph Kückels, MHT''s financial director. MHT has already paid the damages to Husky, and the firm says it is coming off its best year ever in 2006.

MHT also announced it opened a branch in October near Atlanta, GA, that is run by longtime MHT employee Manfred Lausenhammer. The branch includes office space plus room for servicing and assembling preform molds.

Metal/plastics hybrids hit the road

Our May 2006 issue reported that the ‘Betamate’ LESA (Low Energy Surface Adhesive) plastic/metal hybrid technology from Dow Automotive (Auburn Hills, MI), which first saw commercial use in Europe in the VW Polo A4, would soon hit the streets in North America.

Now the supplier has announced that front-end carrier applications on the 2007 Jeep Wrangler and the 2007 Dodge Nitro both take advantage of LESA, as do instrument panels in Lada Samara sedans from Russia’s Avtovaz.

LESA includes a closed-box design on a molding, with the box ''closed'' by a metal insert. Long glass fiber reinforced polypropylene (LGF-PP) is used, with no pre-treating (flaming or priming) of the PP required to adhere the plastic to e-coated steel; metal inserts are applied with adhesives marketed by Dow. Dow also supplies the LGF-PP used. (More on LESA: May 2005 MPW, pg. 70)

Haitian forms JV in Russia

Injection molding machine maker Ningbo Haitian (Ningbo, China) established a joint venture with agent Plastic-Centre (Moscow) for handling sales, application support, training and service exclusively, letting Haitian consolidate the work formerly handled by a network of independent agents in the Russian market. Haitian has a goal of market leadership in Russia and in the former CIS countries by 2010.

Alexander Dokouchaev was appointed CEO of the new company, coming to Haitian from a management and marketing consultancy. Hu Bo, with six years at Haitian, was appointed CTO and technical director. Last year, Haitian sold 140 machines in Russia and the former CIS states, a relatively tiny share of the 17,000 machines it manufactured but enough to give it a top five position in Russia.

Also, Battenfeld Injection Molding (Kottingbrunn, Austria) this month opens a Russian sales company in the NOV Business Center of Moscow.

Dynisco acquired

Dynisco LLC (Franklin, MA), a manufacturer of testing and measurement equipment such as melt pressure sensors, was acquired in mid-December from Audax Group for $243 million by diversified engineering business Roper Industries (Duluth, GA). Dynisco will become part of Roper’s Energy Systems & Controls segment. Larry Klumpp, Dynisco president, and his management team will continue to lead the business.

Dynisco sold its extrusion business unit, which manufactures auxiliary equipment for plastics extrusion including gear pumps, screen changers, cleaning ovens and pelletizers, to Xaloy Inc. last March.

Bayer boosts carbon nanotube production

Bayer MaterialScience (Leverkusen, Germany) will expand its carbon nanotube production from a pilot facility with 30-tonnes/yr capacity to an industrial-scale 3000-tonnes/yr plant. Applications are anticipated in wind-turbine rotor blades, antistatic packaging, and sporting goods like baseball bats and hockey sticks.

In related news, the consumer products containing silver nanoparticles, used to fend off germs, now will require approval from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The EPA has asked that silver nanoparticle manufacturers offer evidence that the product won’t harm waterways or the public health. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration also is considering regulation of nanomaterials.

Reifenhäuser, Rotomec work on coating

Film-extrusion equipment maker Reifenhäuser (Troisdorf, Germany) has penned an agreement with Italian printing and converting machinery maker Rotomec, part of the Bobst Group (Lausanne, Switzerland) to collaborate in extrusion-coating technology, a product Reifenhäuser so far lacks. Under the agreement, Reifenhäuser becomes a preferred supplier of extruders to be integrated into future Rotomec-produced extrusion-coating and laminating lines.

“While Reifenhäuser enjoys a worldwide reputation as a leading manufacturer of extruders and extrusion equipment, we were also seeking to develop our extrusion-coating operations, as we identified in this business the possibility of a most significant potential growth,” says Michael Beckoff, Reifenhäuser’s cast/coatings business manager.

Printpack seals Seal-It deal

Packaging processor Printpack Inc. (Atlanta, GA) added sleeved and heat-shrink films to its flexible packaging portfolio with the acquisition of Seal-It Inc. (Farmingdale, NY). Seal-It converts PVC, polylactic acid (PLA), and PET films at two plants in Farmingdale. In addition to sleeves, the company makes labels and tamper-evident seals.

Printpack operates 23 facilities globally, largely in North America but also with operations in Mexico and England. On the flexible side, it extrudes blown and cast film, and on the rigid side it offers thermoformed packaging. Sharon Lobel, founder and president of Seal-It and one of MPW’s Notable Processors (April 2006 MPW), will be retained as a full-time consultant.

SPI wish list fulfilled

When Bill Carteaux became president of the Society of the Plastics Industry (SPI; Washington, DC) in March 2005, he listed energy legislation and favorable tax policies as two immediate policy goals for the nation’s oldest plastics trade group (see March 2005 MPW for more), and after intensive lobbying he’s seen both realized as part of the Tax Relief and Health Care Act of 2006. The catch-all bill includes measures to lift the Gulf of Mexico natural gas offshore-drilling moratorium and extend the research and development (R&D) tax credit. In addition, funding for the Food and Drug Administration’s food contact notification program, which grants clearance to new food contact materials, was extended through February 2007. The House of Representatives passed the measures on Dec. 8, the Senate the next day, and the bill only awaits President Bush’s expected signature to become law.

Changes at Battenfeld Gloucester

Pepyn Dinandt has been named chairman and president of blown- and cast-film extruder manufacturer Battenfeld Gloucester Engineering (BGE; Gloucester, MA). In mid-October Dinandt joined BGE’s parent firm, SMS Group (Düsseldorf, Germany), as a member of the board, responsible for the firm’s plastics technology business. Dinandt was president of the mannesmann plastics machinery (Munich, Germany) group (includes Demag Plastics Group, Krauss-Maffei Kunststofftechnik, Netstal, and Berstorff) from February 2002 until July 2006, when Madison Capital Partners (Chicago) acquired mpm.

In addition, John Kaplan, a plastics industry newcomer, will assume the role of CEO of Battenfeld Gloucester. Battenfeld Gloucester’s former President and CEO Brian Marvelley left the company and Harold Wrede retired from his position as chairman. The SMS Group’s plastics machinery business now includes BGE, Battenfeld Extrusionstechnik, American Maplan, Battenfeld China and Cincinnati Extrusion, all focused on plastics extrusion.

[ On the record ]

“We’ve found that our diversity in the market place has helped us retain and secure customers who require more than just an injection molder.”

Scott Pope, VP of sales and marketing at Victor Plastics (Victor, IA).

“If you have manufacturing problems in the U.S. you won’t fix it by going to Mexico or China, but if you have something that’s working, you can realize the advantages of going to Mexico and China.” Jay Jessup, director automotive group of commercial real estate broker Cushman & Wakefield.

“Demands of our customers are increasing, but funds to finance improvements are often not available. Also the clients’ own engineering staffs, in many cases, have been reduced to such levels that now we are required to take over engineering jobs they previously handled themselves.” Paul Erasmus, manager technical service and modernization, at materials handling equipment producer Coperion Waeschle (Weingarten, Germany).