N.Y. molder expands, adds five presses DETROIT — Advent Tool & Mold Inc. of Rochester, N.Y., has launched a major expansion that could help the company triple its size in five years.
In January, the company completed an 18,000-square-foot addition to its Rochester plant, said Vice President Jim Murphy. It installed five new presses with clamping forces as high as 220 tons.
Advent invested $1.6 million in the expansion, with $600,000 of that total for equipment. The installation includes two specialty machines for insert molding.
The work expands plant size in Rochester to 63,000 square feet. The plant uses about half of Advent's 6-acre site, Murphy said. The company has room in the facility for 10 more presses and eventually plans another building expansion on the site.
Advent is targeting sales growth, from an expected $15 million this year to $45 million to $50 million as early as five years from now, Murphy said.
The 125-person company plans to employ as many as 185 people within three years, he said.
Advent, an exhibitor at the Society of Automotive Engineers 2000 World Congress in Detroit, molds automotive connectors and covers for under-the-hood parts. The company also makes molds at the facility.
Merged firms closing plant, plan another
REIDSVILLE, N.C. — The merger of two agricultural packaging producers may yield a large central Florida production facility, but at the expense of closing a smaller-scale plant in North Carolina.
Nursery Supplies Inc. of Chambersburg, Pa., and Lerio Corp. of Mobile, Ala., made their merger official March 1. One of the first results was an announcement that the firms will close Lerio's IEM Plastics subsidiary in Reidsville.
The blow molder of agricultural containers, which employs 83, will cease operations in May.
Neither Mark Christian, Lerio Division president, nor Hank Guarriello, chief executive officer of NSI, returned telephone calls last week. But local news reports said the closing is a cost-saving move by NSI, which owns several other facilities that make the same product.
According to an NSI news release, the merged companies plan to build a blow molding and thermoforming facility in an undisclosed location in central Florida by early 2001.
Canon slates two plastic shows for 2001
SANTA MONICA, CALIF. — Canon Communications LLC plans to launch two regional plastics shows in 2001, sponsored by Injection Molding Magazine and Modern Plastics.
The shows will be collocated with existing medical and industrial trade shows, Diane O'Connor, trade show director for Canon, said in a March 10 telephone interview. Santa Monica-based Canon plans to announce details, including the name of the plastics shows, March 15.
The first show is scheduled for Jan. 8-10 at the Anaheim, Calif., convention center. It will run at the same time as Canon's Medical Design and Manufacturing West, and the Pacific Design and Manufacturing Show.
The second show will be June 5-7, 2001, at New York's Jacob Javits Convention during Medical Design and Manufacturing East and the Atlantic Design and Manufacturing Show.
New York-based VS&A Communications Partners II LP owns both IMM and Modern Plastics. VS&A bought Modern Plastics last year from McGraw-Hill Cos. Inc.
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PVC and vinyl chloride monomer production continued as normal last week following a hydrogen chloride gas leak at EVC International NV's Runcorn, England-based plant. The March 8 incident occurred in a unit used to recover and recycle the gas. A spokeswoman for the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based company said the leak has not interfered with production at the 253 million-pound-per-year plant.
The European Commission decided March 8 to extend its temporary ban on phthalates in some toys for three months because it said there has not been enough progress on developing tests to measure migration limits. The EC imposed the ban because it said tests to measure leaching from soft PVC toys are unreliable, and said it needed to act as a precaution. The Brussels, Belfgium, commission remains open to developing new tests and has been talking with industry, an EC spokeswoman said.
