Citadel Plastic Holdings Inc. has purchased compounder QTR Inc. of Evansville, Ind., for an undisclosed price.
For Radnor, Pa.-based Citadel, it's the firm's sixth plastic-related acquisition since 2007. In a July 19 phone interview, Chief Operating Officer Mike Huff said that QTR is “a great fit” for Citadel, which already owns Evansville-based compounder Matrixx Group.
Citadel is buying QTR from President Rod Jackson and Chief Financial Officer Mary Perigo, both of whom will remain with the company. Huff said Citadel has no plans to consolidate QTR work at the Matrixx location, which is about five miles away. QTR might even gain some engineering thermoplastics compounding work from Matrixx beginning later this year, Huff said. QTR previously had done tolling work for Matrixx using those materials.
QTR's main products are custom compounds based on recycled polycarbonate and other recycled engineering resins. The firm generates more than half of its sales from the automotive market.
In 2006, QTR was named Small Business of the Year by the Indiana Chamber of Commerce. The firm also recently installed a small extrusion line for research and development work. The R&D line was funded by a grant from the state of Indiana.
Huff said that QTR “has an excellent brand and product line, and will help us to continue to grow the engineering thermoplastics side of our business.”
QTR employs between 40 and 50 and has annual sales of about $15 million. The firm operates three twin-screw and to single-screw extrusion lines at a 67,000-square-foot plant. QTR also uses its original 38,000 square-foot plant — adjacent to the new building — as a warehouse.
Earl Scott, Ed Martin and three business partners founded QTR in 1993. All five either had worked for GE Plastics in Mount Vernon, Ind., or were veterans of the Evansville-area plastics industry.
Jackson joined the firm in 1997. After the 9-11 attacks, Jackson took a leave from the firm to serve with the U.S. Army as a reservist. He spent six months in Iraq in late 2003 and early 2004 before a training injury caused him to leave active duty.
The QTR deal is Citadel's first since it bought Fiberfil Engineered Plastics Inc. of Stoney Creek, Ontario, in September.
Citadel closed Fiberfil's Stoney Creek plant earlier this year and moved some of the firm's equipment to nearby Guelph, Ontario, where previous Citadel acquisition Aclo Polymers Inc. operates a plant. Fiberfil had been in receivership since July 2009 because of cash-flow problems.
“We'll continue to look to make more acquisitions in engineering thermoplastics and thermosets, and we're going to explore our global options as well,” Huff said.
