For Modern Mold & Tool Inc. owner David J. Pedrotti, the firm's recent $1.5 million purchase of a 6-year-old, 57,000-square-foot building in Pittsfield is a down payment on its future.
Pittsfield Mold & Tool Inc. opened the facility in January 1997. United Shields Corp. bought PM&T in 1999, but later financial woes led to the auctioning of PM&T assets in March 2002. Berkshire Bank, a creditor, bought the building and last month sold it to Modern Mold & Tool.
``I've always loved this building. It's just beautiful. I always thought if we moved in, it would create a presence that customers would really like,'' Pedrotti, president and chief executive officer, said in a telephone interview.
Pedrotti said the company is deciding the best ways to use the building. He expects to move sometime between July and December.
Modern Mold currently operates out of a 30,000-square-foot facility on the other side of Pittsfield. The company builds molds for the medical and electrical industries. It also does molding through its Magnus Molding division. Pedrotti said medical molding work has seen strong growth in recent years.
He pointed to a strong management team, including John Ciullo, vice president in charge of day-to-day operations, and Tim Tomasi, the plant manager at Magnus Molding.
Pedrotti said foreign competition has made the work of a mold maker much more difficult, but medical customers have stuck with the company. He said he worries about the economy and foreign competition, but that did not stop him from investing a half-million dollars in new equipment last year and from buying the building. He estimates that building the facility today would cost $3.7 million.
Modern Mold & Tool has three full-time designers. He said the company has five computer numerically controlled machining centers and five electric discharge machines, including a recently purchased Mitsubishi FX-20 that can handle molds as large as 24 inches square. The company can do production molds and can make prototype parts using stereolithography.
The company does not release sales figures, but Pedrotti said Modern Mold has grown about 10 percent a year in recent years except for 2002, when sales were flat.
Modern Mold was formed by Pedrotti's father, Rod Pedrotti, as a toolmaker in the late 1950s. The company added its molding division in 1985.
