ORLANDO, FLA. (April 6, 11 a.m. ET) — Even when the economy was in a downturn there were sales of smaller molders. Now, with business picking up, there is a lot more interest in the buying and selling of those molders, according to officials at Molding Business Services.
“Even in a down economy – in 2008, 2009 and 2010 we were closing sales. We have one closing next week…and we’ve had four deals in the last five months,” said Terry Minnick, president of Molding Business Services during an NPE interview.
Minnick, his son Joel and Andrew Munson take part in the Florence, Mass.-based business that specializes in advising smaller processors about mergers and acquisitions. They also do executive placements.
“Our sandbox is still the plastic processors, mostly molders in the 3 to 20 million dollar range,” he said.
Minnick said that they’ve developed a 26,000 file database and Munson added that in preparing for NPE, they sent out 60,000 emails.
“The key to selling is to know who your buyer is,” said Minnick, who has owned a plastic company and has many contacts in the industry.
He said that they’ve found that there are owners willing to sell their companies either because they want to retire or go out, or even to handle financial difficulties. The difference now is that there are more buyers interested than a few years ago.
“I gave a speech at SPE in 1995 about the industry seeing a lot of consolidation. Here it is 17 years later and we still have a lot room to go,” he said.
Minnick added that there is a lot of pent-up demand and that it is even a better time to sell.
He said that as an advisor and deal-maker, he could not divulge the deals he’s involved in. However, one buyer, George Danis, who bought Restech Plastic Molding in 2010, agreed to comment.
“We were able to retain all the people and move them all to Hudson [Mass.],” said Danis, who consolidated the business from three locations.
Now, it runs 35 presses from 50-750 tons and has 125 employees.
Minnick predicted that MBS will be involved in eight to nine deals this year.
“It depends on the industry you are serving. Medical device and packaging have been doing well, and automotive is doing well today,” said Munson.
He added that being in a niche situation specializing in such processes as micro-molding or LSR are very advantageous in deal-making these days.
Minnick added that they also do 25-30 individual placements as well.
