SelecTech Inc., a Taunton, Mass., injection molder of outdoor goods made from 100 percent recycled plastics, is making way for its fourth injection molding machine. The machine should be installed and operating in two months, said President Thomas Ricciardelli.
The equipment, manufactured by an undisclosed European machinery supplier, can handle a variety of contaminated raw materials, he said.
"We can feed it plastics that have been unwashed, unsorted, and even with some metal contamination," Ricciardelli said in a telephone interview. "It allows us to use hard-to-recycle materials and keep our costs down."
SelecTech makes planter pots, vinyl flooring, traffic-control accessories and plastic lumber products from post-consumer stretch film, grocery bags, PVC and wire insulation.
The company recently began supplying its plastic landscape timber products to home-improvement retail stores Home Depot and 84 Lumber.
The success of these products has led to steady growth of the company's sales and capacity, according to Ricciardelli.
"We started the company with this notion that we had a capability of taking junk and turning it into something of value," Ricciardelli said. "We're looking for additional product lines to pick up, and we're also trying talk to big companies that have waste problems and turn it into something of value that they can sell."
The company already has an agreement with Wilmington, Del.-based DuPont to secure post-industrial vinyl and miscellaneous carpet-backing material for use in its flooring products, he said. And expected to hit lawn and garden markets this August is a wood-look "whiskey barrel" planter.
SelecTech started operations in 1996 with one injection press and 5,000 square feet of production space. Today the company operates out of a 50,000-square-foot facility.
The company expects to post 2000 sales of $3.8 million, and Ricciardelli expects sales to double annually until they reach $10 million to $20 million.
The company also is considering a second production location either in the Southeast, Midwest or West Coast.
