John Levinson, President of RheTech Inc., which was recently acquired by Swedish rubber compounder Hexpol AB, was positive about the partnership when speaking at Booth S15119 at NPE.
“We are attempting and will expect to expand beyond North America as our new acquisition owner, Hexpol of Sweden, wants us to grow our product lines and to grow our platform into more geographical regions.
“Traditionally our automotive group has been anywhere between 75 percent and 95 percent of our business and it obviously has a lot to do with how well the automotive industry is doing in North America. Right now we are at about 90 percent automotive,” said Levinson.
Speaking on product developments, James Preston, vice president of strategic growth, said: “We are launching a line of hemp-filled polypropylene later this year which will be a new development for us. In fact we have bought another extrusion line just to compound natural-fiber-filled materials at our facility so we will have two lines capable of running that product now.”
The company purchased a TriVolution extruder from B&P Process Equipment for the line.
Looking at company growth, Levinson said: “Throughout the Rhetech group, which is four different locations in America, we will be adding three extruders and obviously if you are going to add extruders the goal is to try to add employment. We don't have a set number. I would say we will have a few strategic hires this year with probably more hires in 2016 and 2017 as we implement the extruders.”
Levinson emphasized his excitement at the partnership with Hexpol saying that there were going to be different and new opportunities.
“We are only two months into the transition but one of the initial things we have found that it gives our name a little bit more global recognition. We have certainly found the Hexpol name to be of benefit, and we hope we can be of benefit for Hexpol on the RheTech side.”