Seaway Plastics Engineering LLC owners Tim Smock and Paul Bernard are turning to private equity investor Tonka Bay Equity Partners LLC to help accelerate the company's growth.
“Over the last 10 years we've had good consistent growth, but now is a great time to bring in outside partners and continue down the path we are on,” said Tim Smock, CEO of Seaway Plastics, in a telephone interview.
Details of the deal were not released.
Seaway Plastics, which has facilities in Port Richey and Brooksville, Fla., specializes in prototype and low-volume injection molding, as well as mold making and micromolding. Seaway and its Florida Finishing Division will be exhibiting at NPE 2015 at Booth S37027.
Smock said they were looking for a partner that understood Seaway's niche and the opportunities that an equity partner could provide. He said that the current management team remains in place.
“They recognize that we have strong team and strong culture and if anything, they want to build on it,” he said.
The company's 160 employees continue under the new ownership plan. The only change he noted was that Florida Finishing is no longer a separate entity, but a division within Seaway.
Smock said Seaway added micromolding in June 2014, acquiring the custom micromolding business of TNI Manufacturing Inc. of Sunrise, Fla. Seaway has one 33 ton, small-shot machine and is considering adding another.
The company also added an ISO Class 7 portable clean room for its Brooksville facility. Overall, it has 31 injection molding machines ranging up to 950 tons. The 950 ton Nissei was added in 2014.
Seaway works with original equipment manufacturers in many different industries including medical, aerospace, military, packaging, food service, industrial, electronics and consumer products.
Tonka Bay, which is based in Minnetonka, Minn., acquires and invests in lower middle market businesses in the highly engineered manufacturing, business service and value-added distribution sectors. Among its portfolio of companies is micro molder Accumold LLC of Ankeny, Iowa.
St. Louis-based Douglas Group represented Seaway in the transaction.
