Compounding veteran Randy Rudisill is getting back in the game with American Compounding Specialties LLC, a new firm set to open in January in Fowlerville, Mich.
ACS will be a toll compounder of engineering resins such as nylon and polycarbonate, said Rudisill, who retired earlier this year after a career of more than 20 years with Asahi Thermofil Inc., a major polypropylene compounder also located in Fowlerville.
ACS, owned by Rudisill and fellow Thermofil veteran Dave Donie, is building a 17,500-square-foot plant on an 11-acre site in Fowlerville. At first, the plant will operate one twin-screw extrusion line with annual capacity of 20 million pounds and will create 20 jobs.
Plans call for doubling the plant's size and installing three more lines within three years. The cost of the initial project is estimated at $4 million.
In an Oct. 28 telephone interview, Rudisill said he and Donie first saw the potential of toll compounding in 1998, after a fire destroyed about half of the Thermofil site. While rebuilding, Thermofil relied on a network of toll compounders.
``Some of the [toll compounders] we looked at weren't in that great shape,'' Rudisill recalled. ``We saw that there was need for a state-of-the-art toll compounder that a customer would be proud to visit.''
Rudisill added that ACS has no plans to offer proprietary products, and won't be competing with Thermofil.
``Dave and I both have noncompete agreements with Thermofil, but that doesn't cover toll compounding, because Thermofil doesn't do any work in that area,'' he said. ``Actually, Thermofil is a potential customer for us.''
Target customers for ACS are large plastics and chemical firms. The new company also has donated 6 acres of its parcels to Fowlerville for use as green space and wetlands. The site had been unused for about 20 years, after being vacated by Johnson Controls Inc.
ACS has received a $250,000 brownfield tax credit from the state of Michigan and a $600,000 tax abatement over 12 years from Fowlerville.
