Key gets 3rd extension on equity deadline NOVI, MICH. — Automotive supplier Key Plastics LLC has extended for a third time its deadline to bring in more capital.
The debt-heavy company filed a Feb. 25 report with the Securities and Exchange Commission giving its owners until March 10 to secure more money.
It faced earlier deadlines in January and on Feb. 15.
Majority owner Key Plastics Holdings also extended until March 25 its deadline for shareholders to contribute an additional $5 million, if the company cannot borrow other funds.
Novi-based Key listed $428 million in debt at the end of September. Market analysts with Standard & Poor's Corp. of New York lowered Key's credit rating Feb. 1 to a CCC-plus from B, a two-step decrease, listing the company as having "an identifiable risk of default."
Joe Buzzitta, vice president of marketing, referred comments to Chief Executive Officer David C. Benoit, who did not respond.
Key listed $550.8 million in sales for 1999, up from $422.6 a year earlier.
The business manufactures interior, exterior and under-the-hood parts such as door handles, bezels and audio components.
Last year Key bought Foggini Group of Turin, Italy, an injection molder serving automakers throughout Europe. The deal added 175 injection presses and about 1,000 employees to the operation.
SPI plans to gather, report mold statistics
WASHINGTON — Mold makers are moving ahead to gather statistics under a program organized by the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc.
"It has moved past the exploratory stage to a formational level, at this point," said Walt Bishop, executive director of SPI's Machinery, Molders and Moldmakers Division.
Plans call for reporting data on injection and blow molds. For injection molds, a statistics committee is studying the idea of including numbers for molds running thermoplastics and thermoset resins. Mold production would be based on both unit and sales volumes.
The information also may be broken down by U.S. shipments of molds and mold components, and imports and exports, Bishop said.
The group also has discussed listing molds by end-use markets and according to the clamping forces of machines on which they would run.
SPI hopes to develop a format for the statistics in late summer. The formal mold program would start Jan. 1.
This is a busy time for mold makers and the Washington-based SPI. A separate committee is drafting the first-ever safety standard for molds, under the American National Standards Institute.
Commenting on the stepped-up activity, Bishop said: "One of the things that we've identified as a priority for SPI is to go out on a grass-roots level and get to the masses."
German tool shops team up with Ala. firm
COTTONDALE, ALA. — Two toolmakers from Stuttgart, Germany, are teaming up with an Alabama machinery company to make injection molds in the United States.
The German tooling shops — Stuttgart-based Eberspacher Formenbau GmbH and Hummel-Formen GmbH — will start operations in Cottondale, at a 24,000-square-foot plant owned by Smith's Machine, a division of HWS Enterprises Inc. The Cottondale-based equipment and production-machining supplier is a joint venture partner with the toolmakers.
The joint venture, Alabama Precision Mold LLC, will launch in June, making tools for the automotive industry. The company will start with 44 people and hire 30 more within two years, said Timothy Smith, vice president of sales and engineering with Smith's Machine.
Within 24 months, the mold maker also plans to invest about $3 million in an on-site expansion that will add another 20,000 square feet, Smith said.
Both Eberspacher Formenbau and Hummel-Formen recorded sales of about $24 million deutsche marks (US$13.6 million) last year, said Frank Doettling, chief executive officer of Eberspacher Formenbau. His company also owns a tooling plant and an injection molding facility in Venice, Italy.