"We're back." That's the distilled message Dave Lawrence, Milacron LLC's president of worldwide plastics and DME, has for the plastics industry nearly two years after the company exited a bankruptcy reorganization, and the plastics sector bottomed out in synch with the global economy.

Speaking with PlasticsToday from the company's Batavia, OH facility on the second-day of a three-day open house, Lawrence said that Milacron officially returned to profitability in the fourth quarter of 2009, a place it hadn't been in 10 years. Only months removed from the August 2009 completion of its restructuring, the company has stayed in the black ever since.

"I think we're sending some signals to the market that we're back, we're strong," Lawrence said. "That's what the last few days are about. People go out in our factory and say, 'Wow.'"

Over three days, the company invited its customers to its Batavia plant for a half-day technology symposium followed by tours of its shop floor with live machinery demonstrations in injection molding, including liquid silicone rubber, metal molding, thin-wall packaging, and high-speed molding of a pail, as well as extrusion demonstrations of a building and construction profile and medical tubing.

Lawrence said the event was serving as the soft launch of its revamped MTs and MS servo injection molding machines, which seek to further optimize energy efficiency through a series of upgrades over previous models. According to Ron Hertzer, Milacron global product manager, energy efficiency upgrades on the MM servo machines include the replacement of asynchronous AC induction motors with 3-phase synchronous motors that utilize permanent magnets.

The company also used the event to highlight its PowerPak all-electric line of equipment targeting the packaging industry. Ranging from 330 to 1125 tons, the machines offer a number of new features including two-stage injection for larger shots, a fold-up "sandwich board" for easier mold access on the non-operator side, and a patent pending "eject bump" that utilizes two outboard cylinders on the outboard plate to help push deep-draw parts of their cores.

Now hiring

Lawrence said that current staffing levels are at or above where they were prior to the slowdown, with company having hired 140 since August 2009 in southwest Ohio along, with another 20 to 30 employees still needed.

"We're being taxed a bit in terms of resources and supply chain, actually," Lawrence said. "We have increased our business faster then we anticipated, so we're facing some issues with our supply stream, and we're also looking for people."

In coming weeks, Lawrence said the company will also start manufacturing a globally designed servomotor machine line that was being produced at its facility in India after starting out in the U.S. Batavia will soon begin production of the MTS line, launching it as a servomotor machine in North America because of its energy-saving opportunities.

Confidence renewed

As far as any lingering effects of the company's reorganization, Lawrence admitted that as a company, "you pay a price," and can experience a "bankruptcy hangover," but noted that is now very much in the past.

"Honestly, I think we're done with it," Lawrence said. "I want to put it in the rear-view mirror. When we went through some very difficult times,  we had employees that stood behind us that were phenomenal, we had suppliers, and we hurt some of those people, that stood behind us, and we had customers that were really rooting for us, and they wanted us to come through it. It's a 125-year-old company, we had a blip."

On the Monday prior to the first day of the open house, Lawrence said Milacron had a company-wide sales meeting, and at that event, and over the last few weeks, he said the momentum the company as a whole is experiencing is tangible and long missed. "I haven't seen this level of energy and excitement that I've seen over the past few months, and very obviously exhibited over the last few days, in years," Lawrence said, "and that's good."