Chenango Valley merges with tool maker
SHERBURNE, N.Y. — The owner of a tool builder and an injection molding firm has combined the businesses and moved them into a larger facility.
Chenango Valley Technologies LLC is operating out of a new, 31,000-square-foot plant in Sherburne. Lloyd Baker, president and chief executive officer, said he merged Chenango Tool Co. of Sherburne and Madison Plastics LLC of Verona, N.Y., and relocated the new business during the recent holidays.
Baker said in a telephone interview that his firm invested about $1.5 million in the new facility and three new injection presses and other equipment in the past year. He bought Madison Plastics in 1996 after Madison's former owner died. Chenango Valley plans to install another new press, a 170-ton Milacron machine, this month. It now runs 10 presses with clamping forces of 55-450 tons.
Baker estimated the new firm's annual sales will be $2.5 million to $3 million. Electrical and medical components are its chief molding markets. Baker started injection mold builder Chenango Tool in 1973.
Hanna to acquire German compounder
CLEVELAND — M.A. Hanna Co. of Cleveland will make its first move into the European rubber compounding market by acquiring Melos Carl Bosch GmbH & Co., a rubber and plastics compounder based in Melle, Germany.
Melos produces rubber, thermoplastic elastomers and plastic compounds for the wire and cable, sport and recreation and automotive markets. Its 1997 sales are estimated at $30 million. Terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Carl Bosch, Melos' managing director, will remain in that position with Hanna.
In another Hanna development, Joseph Bauer resigned Jan. 5 as president of the company's M.A. Hanna Color division to pursue other business interests.
Bauer was named president of the Suwanee, Ga.-based division in 1996 when Hanna merged Allied Color, PMS Consolidated and Wilson Color into one North American business. He had been president of PMS Consolidated since joining Hanna in 1992.
Douglas Schrank, Hanna's senior vice president of operations, will manage M.A. Hanna Color on an interim basis.
Hanna's primary businesses are plastics and rubber compounding, rubber additives, color and additive concentrates and distribution of plastic resins and engineered plastic shapes.
ZCL Composites closing pultrusion unit
EDMONTON, ALBERTA — ZCL Composites Inc. will shut down its pultrusion division and sell the assets within the next six months, the Edmonton-based firm announced Dec. 29.
Its pultrusion division in Nisku, Alberta, produces thermoset composite profiles, including the firm's E-Z Deck product line. ZCL said it will offer the division's assets for sale as a going concern or individually. Officials were unavailable to describe the assets and business.
The pultrusion operation had a pretax loss of C$1.1 million (US$770,000) for the six months ended Sept. 30. Sluggish sales in the third quarter will cause further losses, the company predicted.
ZCL will concentrate on its core business of liquid-handling systems such as its Prezerver line of double-wall, glass fiber-reinforced polyester fuel tanks commonly used by gasoline retailers.
DongShin eyes Mexico, Europe for plants
LONG BEACH, CALIF. — South Korean injection molder manufacturer DongShin Hydraulics Co. is considering building factories in Mexico and Eastern Europe to make components for its machines, according to a distributor of the machines in the United States.
But DongShin officials are waiting to see if the South Korean economy improves before making a final decision, said Thomas Koh, marketing manager for Promax Plastics Machinery, Inc., a Rancho Dominguez, Calif.-based distributor of DongShin equipment.
``They will wait until it settles down a little bit more,'' he said in an interview at the Western Plastics Expo, held Jan. 6-8 in Long Beach.
DongShin would ship the components back to South Korea for final assembly, he said.
Promax said the weakened South Korean currency will make its machines cheaper in the United States and boost sales in 1998, from 75 machines last year to more than 100.
