Plastics News has selected 20/20 Custom Molded Plastics Ltd. for one of its PN Excellence Awards.
20/20, a structural foam molder in Holiday City, Ohio, won for industry and public service.
DLH Industries Inc. won for customer relations and Protoplast Inc. was honored for its employee relations. Protoplast was also a finalist for this year's Processor of the Year Award.
The judges, who are Plastics News reporters and editors, evaluated PN Excellence Award candidates on those three criteria — customer relations, employee relations and industry and public service — which are three of the seven used to determine the overall Processor of the Year Award.
Tech Molded Plastics Inc. of Meadville, Pa., was named Processor of the Year.
Ron Ernsberger and a group of investors built the 20/20 factory building in 1999 in Holiday City, a tiny crossroads town in northwestern Ohio. The building is highly visible from the Ohio Turnpike — and 20/20 stays just as high-profile both in its small-town area and in the plastics industry niche of structural foam molding.
Structural foam is a tiny part of the industry, but an important one. It uses a low-pressure chemical process to make some very large parts like pallets and shipping containers, but structural foam is little-known outside of its small group of practitioners. Ernsberger tried to change that by organizing a structural foam pavilion at NPE2012. It didn't come together, but 20/20 had its own exhibit — its first at any trade show, let alone NPE.
Ernsberger plans to keep trying to get other foam molders to exhibit together, at the next NPE in 2015. He's trying to raise the profile on this process of structural foam.
20/20 also has done mold sampling and worker training for employees — from other companies.
On the community-involvement side, 20/20 is very involved locally through projects such as:
• Sponsoring a local baseball team and giving some employees flexibility to coach youth sports.
• Supporting the Boy Scouts, including a cake baking/decorating contest that pairs the scout with his father or another male — no moms allowed. The company hires the scouts to clean up after its annual Christmas party.
• Donating to the Helping Hands Food Pantry.
• Sponsoring the Miss Montpelier Contest every year.
• Handing out free passes to the Williams County Fair to employees.
• 20/20 provides freight and delivery for truckloads of dog food to the local Human Society that is working on a shoestring budget, and Ernsberger takes it seriously. He has adopted five dogs from local shelters.
