Luxemburg, Wis.-based N.E.W. Plastics Corp. has acquired the intellectual property and manufacturing equipment of structural plastic lumber maker Trimax Building Products Inc. for an undisclosed sum.
N.E.W. officials have moved some of the Trimax equipment from the now-defunct company's Anderson, Ind., headquarters to one of N.E.W.'s two facilities in Luxemburg. They declined to disclose how many lines were purchased.
N.E.W. is a family-owned company that has been blow molding containers since 1968, and recycling and extruding plastic lumber since the early 1970s.
Trimax has been on precarious financial footing since its days as U.S. Plastic Lumber Corp. In April 2007, the company stopped production and announced plans to liquidate its assets. Investors stepped in and moved the company from Chicago to Anderson.
Trimax will remain in name, but N.E.W. officials plan to integrate the business with their ReNew Plastics extrusion operation.
“It gives us opportunities that we haven't realized before,” said Lonnie Vincent, N.E.W. co-owner and vice president, in an April 29 telephone interview.
N.E.W. officials already were doing in-house research and development work for new structural lumber products, Vincent said. When Trimax officials approached them, N.E.W.'s leadership team began in-house discussions and ultimately decided to go ahead with the acquisition.
N.E.W. will take a “very steady approach” to growing its structural lumber business, Vincent said. “If we're looking at flooding the mass market, we're in the wrong business,” he said. “It's definitely a niche market. We know that structural will be an application in certain instances.”
Trimax structural lumber is comprised of glass-fiber-reinforced recycled high density polyethylene.
“We know that there will be a bit of a learning curve,” Vincent said. “The objective for us is to make that learning curve as short as possible and deliver the product that our customers are expecting.”
While Springdale, Ark.-based Advanced Environmental Recycling Technologies Inc. gets credit for bringing wood-plastic composite decking to market, plastic lumber was invented by N.E.W.'s founder, Irv Vincent, in 1973.