FITCHBURG, MASS. — Injection molder Acro-Matic Plastics Corp. plans to spend at least $5 million to build a second plant to capture more business in its strong medical and automotive markets.
The Leominster, Mass.-based company plans to open a second facility in that city in 1998, and also dedicate about one-tenth of the 100,000-square-foot facility to assembly work, said George Doumani, vice president of sales and engineering.
The assembly work is coming, in part, from computer and business equipment manufacturers that are downsizing and contracting out manufacturing functions, he said. He spoke in an Oct. 29 interview at the MassPlastics '97 trade show in Fitchburg.
``Computer and business equipment companies are downsizing and are off-loading a lot of assembly work,'' Doumani said. In addition, he said ``some customers, especially medical, use us as their manufacturing facility.''
The company had picked out land and planned to expand this year, but ran into problems with the site and has pushed back the expansion to 1998. The new site will be in the Jytek Park industrial area of the city, and will have room for another 100,000 square feet of building space.
The molder and toolmaker, which currently has 21 injection molding machines, could add another four or five presses, Doumani said. The firm also will use the new facility to consolidate machines now operating out of two rented warehouses in the city, he said.
The company does about $18 million in annual sales, and hopes that the new facility will push that figure to $25 million two years after opening, he said.
Acro-Matic tends to pick molding operations where quality matters much more than price, he added. ``It's not really price competition. It's not like we're molding buckets,'' he said.
About 150 employees work for the privately held company, but the expansion is not likely to mean much in terms of additional employment because of investments in automation, including process control equipment on every machine, Doumani said.
The firm has about 80,000 square feet in Leominster now, including about 25,000 square feet of rented space. The Crisci family of Leominster owns Acro-Matic, which was launched in 1964.
