Two years after it sold an extruder factory in Austria, Milacron Inc. has purchased a small German company, Compounding Processing Machinery GmbH, that makes parallel twin-screw extruders and designs screws and barrels.
Jim Abbiati, president of ExtrusionTek Milacron, compared the CPM acquisition with Milacron's 1998 purchase of Wear Technology in McPherson, Kan. Like Wear Technology, CPM brings the ability to design screws for any brand of machine, not just Milacron extruders.
For the last several years, Milacron has been pushing to become a full-service supplier of aftermarket screws and barrels.
``They have great design capability,'' Abbiati said, describing CPM. That was the attraction. ``We don't need [production] capacity, we need design capabilities,'' he said.
The company, in Grossefehn, Germany, can produce screws for both parallel and conical twin-screw extruders. On the new-extruder side, CPM makes counter-rotating, parallel twin-screw machines.
Milacron declined to say how much it paid for CPM, or give details, such as the number of employees.
Ernst Krueger founded CPM in 1995, and he remains with the company. Krueger is a graduate of the IKV technical school, the Institut fur Kunststoffverarbeitung, in Aachen, Germany. Before starting CPM, he worked in the raw materials industry, concentrating on PVC formulations, wood fiber, polypropylene, calendering and extrusion. He also served as a technical director of an extrusion company, then worked at Theysohn Group of Cos.
Abbiati said CPM started out designing and making replacement screws, then later began building its own line of extruders. CPM sells its twin-screw extruders to customers that make PVC window profiles, pipe and PVC compounds.
Milacron sold its Vienna extrusion factory to SMS AG, the maker of Battenfeld machines, in 2000. Milacron continued to build extruders in Batavia, Ohio, at its Plastics Technologies Group headquarters.
The Vienna plant made both conical and parallel twin-screw extruders, but Abbiati said it was known primarily for its conical machines. He said the deal gives Milacron's core U.S. business ``an immediate infusion of advanced European parallel twin-screw processing technology.''
CPM has customers throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
Milacron will sell the machines under the CPM Milacron brand name.