CHICAGO — Auxiliary equipment manufacturer Mokon is in a growth mode.
``We have a five-year plan to double our facility space starting in 1998,'' Thomas Valentine, Mokon vice president, said in an interview at NPE 1997, held June 16-20 in Chicago. ``We forecast annual sales growth of 10-15 percent over that period.''
Buffalo, N.Y.-based Mokon is a division of molder Protective Closures Co. Inc., also of Buffalo.
``We are the only temperature-control manufacturer that has an injection molder as a sister company,'' Valentine said. ``We get a lot of our ideas from Protective Enclosures,'' which operates more than 60 presses.
Valentine is in the midst of a two-year term as chairman of the auxiliary section of Washington-based Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.'s Machinery Division.
Auxiliary equipment for the plastics industry constitutes about 75 percent of Mokon's sales, with most of the remainder from units for the die-casting and food and chemical processing industries, Valentine said. Annual sales growth has averaged about 10 percent during the past 10 years.
In growth on the equipment front, Mokon's NPE exhibit included an improved heat-transfer fluid system, redesigned chillers and temperature-control systems, and a new descaling unit.
Mokon's work on the HTF System completes a redesign and improvement of its entire product line, according to Valentine.
``We have made the system more compact and portable, improved control capability and heating efficiency and increased the cooling capacity,'' he said.
A cool-oil reservoir design eliminates thermal shock, isolating the cooling circuit from the heating circuit and incorporating a continuous-flow heat exchanger for higher cooling rates. The HTF System starts at $3,600.
The new Iceman line of portable chillers fits on a small footprint, contains noncorrosive components and has either air-cooled or water-cooled condenser units. Chillers in capacities of one-half to 20 tons start at $3,800.
Full-range temperature-control systems offer heating and chilling elements in one compact, self-supporting unit. Capacities range from 2-20 tons for chilling and 4-48 kilowatts for heating. Most units are customized.
In a joint arrangement, Barber-Colman Co.'s industrial instruments division supplies microprocessor-based temperature controllers as standard equipment on Iceman chillers and the HTF System and as an option on other Mokon units.
Mokon's D-Scaler, a new maintenance-type descaling unit that costs $1,050, ``removes rust, scale and lime deposits using our nontoxic D-Scaler Fluid, which will not harm equipment,'' Valentine said.
The fluid costs $13 per gallon in 5-, 30- or 50-gallon containers.
Mokon employs 50 at its 20,000-square-foot facility in Buffalo.
Protective Closures' parent firm, Mark IV Industries Inc. of Amherst, N.Y., reported profit of $56.1 million on sales of $2.1 billion for the fiscal year ended Feb. 28.
