Resin Technology Inc., a Fort Worth, Texas-based consulting firm for resin buyers, is expanding its ranks. The 5-year-old firm has added five staffers in the past 11/2 years and looks to add two more by the end of 2002.
``We're using the same business model,'' RTI President Garland Strong said in a recent interview at Plastics News' office in Akron. ``We're focused on resin 100 percent of the time.''
That business model is pretty simple: RTI gets half of the amount it saves its clients by buying resin, but if its clients don't save, RTI gets nothing.
The concept apparently is attractive to some buyers, since RTI now helps to negotiate contracts for more than a billion pounds of resin each year. That number could hit 2 billion pounds by the middle of next year, Strong said.
Recent additions to the RTI team include:
* Gus Garrett, who spent 36 years with Dow Chemical Co., including 27 years in polyethylene sales.
* Dave Ticko, whose 34-year chemicals and plastics career included senior sales positions with Union Carbide Corp., Amoco Corp. and British Petroleum plc.
* Michael Burns, whose plastics resume includes a 12-year stint with distributor H. Muehlstein & Co. Inc.
``When we're talking to the owners and presidents of [potential clients], we have to convince them that their purchasing guy should do business with us,'' Strong said. ``To do that, we need people who not only have knowledge of the markets, but who also have integrity and a good reputation in the industry.''
RTI still aims to get its clients pricing in the lower third of the industry. In spite of its growing volume, RTI still negotiates each purchase separately, rather than pooling the PE buying of several clients, for example.
``We really can't negotiate collectively because there's so much specialization in the industry as far as resin is concerned,'' Strong said.
In most cases, an RTI staffer is present when negotiations take place. The typical RTI customer buys between 10 million and 60 million pounds of resin each year, although Strong said customers run the gamut from 3 million to 300 million.
After this year's additional hires are made, RTI will employ 11.