With resin supplies tight and costly, processors are buying equipment that squeezes out every drop of resin. That's good news for Dynisco Inc., a Sharon, Mass., company that has grown by acquisition from a $10 million transducer supplier a decade ago into a group of companies supplying transducers, gear pumps, screen changers, testing equipment and hot-runner systems.
Roger Brooks, chief executive officer, expects 1995 sales to reach between $80 million and $100 million. The group of Dynisco companies - Dynisco USA, Kayeness, Kona, Dynisco International and Synex, which includes Extek and Normag-employs 550 people.
Processors ``don't want to waste material because they're only getting so much,'' Brooks said in a telephone interview from Sharon in November.
Dynisco was founded in 1953 in Cambridge, Mass., by two professors at Massachusetts Institute of Technology who are no longer involved with the company. Dynisco makes pressure and temperature transducers-sensors that give feedback on plastics processing.
Twenty years later, Dynisco decided to diversify beyond transducers. It sought companies that build upon Dynisco's theme of plastics process improvement. In 1988 Dynisco bought Kayeness Inc. of Morgantown, Pa., which makes polymer testing equipment.
Other acquisitions since then: in 1991, Normag Corp., a maker of gear pumps for extruders in Hickory, N.C.; and in 1993, Kona Corp., a supplier of hot-runner systems for injection molding in Gloucester, Mass. Kona was a bigger company than Normag or Kayeness, so Dynisco worked to beef them up.
Kayeness made two acquisitions in 1994, buying two on-line device manufacturers, Seiscor Analytical Instruments and Flow Vision. Seiscor Analytical Instruments makes equipment that measures viscosity of melted polymers. Flow Vision's devices study polymers for additive levels, gel and particle contamination and film quality.
On Nov. 22, Dynisco announced it had purchased Extek Inc., a manufacturer of hydraulic screen changers in Danvers, Mass., and would combine Extek with Normag to create a new company, Synergistic Extrusion Technologies Inc., or Synex. The Normag and Extek brand names will continue, and manufacturing will remain in both locations- Danvers and Hickory.
Brooks said each of the four ``legs'' of the firm has sales of at least $10 million. Each unit has a process demonstration area and laboratory. The result is a large firm made of small units that can move quickly.
``When we combine all that, it gives us a lot of resources,'' Brooks said. For example, Synex is being positioned as a single source for extrusion screen changers and gear pumps.
Watch for new extrusion products from Synex, said Angelo Firenze, Synex president and chief executive officer.
``In the future, Synex will offer more products and technologies as a result of proprietary product development, licensing agreements, joint ventures and acquisitions,'' he said.
To develop products, Synex will work with customers and primary equipment suppliers.
``Our focus as a company is clearly on the front end, on the engineering/design end,'' he said.
Synex will make products either in-house or through suppliers. Firenze also wants Synex to expand its technology base by purchasing more companies or product lines.
``We want to be in businesses that are in developing markets. We don't want to be in a business, for example, where there's 10 companies out there already serving the market,'' he said.
Brooks said privately held Dynisco's owner is a Philadelphia-based family trust investment group, which he would not identify. Sales have grown 20 percent a year during the past decade, and the company projects 15 percent growth through 1998. Dynisco does not break out sales by business unit.
About 35 percent of sales comes from overseas. It has offices in the United Kingdom, France, Italy and Japan. Its European headquarters is in Heilbronn, Germany.