Tata AutoComp taps HPM for 3 presses
MOUNT GILEAD, OHIO - HPM is building three large-tonnage, two-platen injection presses in Mount Gilead to export to Tata AutoComp Systems Ltd., a subsidiary of Tata Motors Ltd.
``It's a unique opportunity for us in a high-profile venture,'' said Gerry Sposato, HPM's vice president of sales and marketing. Each of the presses has 2,200 tons of clamping force.
Mumbai, India-based Tata will use the machines to mold bumper fascias and instrument panels for current car models, HPM said in a news release. The machines will not being used to mold parts for the Tata Nano, touted as the world's cheapest car when it was introduced Jan. 10 at the New Delhi Auto Expo.
HPM will ship two of the three presses in the second quarter. The third one will be delivered later this year, Sposato said. More business could follow, he added.
``We are in negotiations for smaller-tonnage machines,'' Sposato said in a telephone interview. Such an order could include presses of 500-1,500 tons for various Tata factories, he said. Tata AutoComp Systems, which the Indian company calls its Taco group, runs 24 plants.
HPM said it secured the Tata business - the machinery maker's first-ever plastics machinery sale to India - thanks to the decision by its parent, Taylor's Industrial Services LLC, to start an engineering services company in India in 2006.
Bourdon to head Krauss Maffei division
MUNICH, GERMANY - Karlheinz Bourdon, who left a top post at Milacron Inc. nearly a year ago, has resurfaced as managing director of the injection molding machinery division at Krauss Maffei AG in Munich. Krauss Maffei announced the news Feb. 1.
With the position, Bourdon, 50, automatically has a seat on Krauss Maffei's executive committee.
Dietmar Straub, chief executive officer and chairman of Krauss Maffei, called Bourdon ``a manager with substantial international experience and many years' know-how in our industry.''
Bourdon's last position at Milacron was president of global plastics machinery, a job that covered all equipment for the company, including injection molding, extrusion, blow molding and structural foam.
But in late 2006, Bourdon was bumped down - heading just Milacron's injection molding press operations - after Milacron went outside the company to hire Robert Simpson as president of the global plastics machinery. Three months later, in February 2007, Bourdon left Milacron. Simpson is gone now, too.
Bourdon holds an advanced degree from the Institut fur Kunststoffverarbeitung technical school in Aachen, Germany. He was working at the Klöckner Ferromatik injection press factory in Malterdingen, Germany, when Cincinnati-based Milacron bought the business in 1993.
Rotomolder, thermoformer to open soon
LENNOX, S.D. - Plastics veteran Brian Rawlings is setting up a multipurpose plastics plant in Lennox.
Fusion Plastics Co. is due to start in mid-May with rotational molding and thermoforming capabilities. The business also will include a plastic liner operation for lining tanks and similar equipment with polyethylene sheet for waterproofing, he said.
Rawlings, Fusion's chief operating officer, said the operation will call for an investment of between $2 million and $2.5 million. Rawlings' partner, Sioux Steel Co. of Sioux Falls, S.D., will handle financing. However, Fusion will not be a division of Sioux Steel, he said.
Fusion will start with 15-20 employees and four Ferry rotomolding machines, Rawlings said. He expects the firm's workforce to grow to about 50 in a few years, and plans to add two more Ferry machines and possibly an FTP machine, eventually. The company already has a Brown heavy-gauge thermoforming unit and will add another, he said.
``We're going after the agricultural sector, but we will be a custom house,'' Rawlings said by telephone.
The liner business could piggyback orders with Sioux Steel, which makes steel tanks and enclosures.
Fusion's seven-year plan involves a future plant in Dallas and another somewhere between Texas and South Dakota, he said.
In addition to rotomolding, Rawlings' plastics background includes stints in injection molding, thermoforming and extrusion.