Lomont Molding Inc., a Mount Pleasant, Iowa, injection molder and structural foam molder, is the focus of a nice story in its local newspaper today about how it kept production of a housewares product in the United States. The story, from the Mt. Pleasant News, describes how Lomont made a connection at a trade show with Steve and Rick McMahan, who were marketing Fasta Pasta, a plastic microwave pasta cooker.
When he saw the device in action, Dennis Heaton, vice president of Lomont Molding in Mt. Pleasant, made a quick offer to the McMahan brothers, "We can competitively manufacture your product here in the U.S.A." They wanted Steve McMahan's plastic microwave pasta cooker, Fasta Pasta, to be manufactured in the U.S., said his brother Rick, but they'd had reliability problems with other firms in the country. They had high specifications for design and wanted to keep the product in the U.S. so the manufacturer did not substitute this for that. The product is made of high-grade FDA-approved 90-mils-thick plastic. For comparison, most of the plastic containers you buy at the store are 30 mils thick.Fasta Pasta has been mentioned in Good Housekeeping magazine, according to the article. It's surprising, but these types of stories about projects underway at plastics processors are pretty unusual. But it's a nice way for a small company to get a little attention, which can come in handy when a company is recruiting workers, seeking assistance from local authories, or looking for new customers.
