Xaloy Inc. has new top management committed to marketing its position as a global supplier of plasticizing systems including screws and barrels, melt pumps, screen changers, pelletizers and chill rolls.
“That's part of the core of our strategy. We're the only supplier in the industry that supplies products from end to end,” said Ron Auletta, CEO and president.
Xaloy continues to develop new technology. At NPE2009, held June 22-26 in Chicago, the firm showcased its nXmix two-stage mixer that operates in-line with a conventional extruder to disperse fillers and additives at low levels of shear, temperature and energy use. It also exhibited a bimetallic extrusion barrel featuring an inlay of X800 tungsten carbide, for wear resistance; the Fusion II screw; the EM-15 screen changer; and a melt pump.
Since an ownership change last year, several new executives have been added at Xaloy's headquarters in New Castle, Pa. Xaloy changed hands between two private equity firms last year. Industrial Growth Partners of San Francisco, which bought Xaloy from Baird Capital Partners, recruited Auletta to take the top position.
Xaloy's longtime president, Walter Cox, left the firm. Also gone are Xaloy veterans Randy Pearson, formerly Xaloy North America president, and Gunther Hoyt, formerly executive vice president.
Auletta, who had been president and CEO at GED Integrated Solutions Inc., a Twinsburg, Ohio, maker of machinery for fabricating vinyl windows and doors, has assembled a management team to direct Xaloy's game plan. One focus is on boosting business around the world.
To strengthen that effort, the firm hired a new vice president of global marketing, Tom Bametzrieder. He came from AMI Doduco, where he was sales and marketing director. Auletta and Bametzrieder outlined Xaloy's strategy in an interview in New Castle before NPE2009.
Bametzrieder said Export, Pa.-based AMI Doduco supplied its electrical components to multinational customers like Eaton Corp.
“That's much of the premise here,” he said. “As our customers move, we want to move with them.”
Xaloy has added several other executives, including Jeffrey Huskey as vice president of global original equipment sales; Bernd Höhn, managing director of Europe and Asia; and Steven Purcell, vice president of North American operations.
Despite all the changes, there are plenty of familiar faces at Xaloy as well. Tim Womer, who continues as Xaloy's chief technology officer, is a longtime screw and barrel authority who was president of the Society of Plastics Engineers for 2006-07.
The new executives can help “shore up” Xaloy's service to global customers, Auletta said.
“Being a company based in America, we've done an adequate job of serving our customers here in North America. But I'd venture to say that, where a lot of manufacturing has gone with outsourcing strategies in place, where a lot of the [machinery makers] have moved to outside of North America, we need to be a better company serving those other global markets,” he said.
The U.S. plastics equipment market is hurting right now, especially in new injection molding machine sales. That problem has hit the screw and barrel business and made international sales even more important. In 2008, total screw and barrel shipments fell 12 percent, according to the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc. in Washington.
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