In a second year of intensive investment, mold maker StackTeck Systems Ltd. will spend $4.2 million this year on new machinery and automation to increase capacity throughout its manufacturing and testing facilities.
The company last year spent more than $4 million on new equipment. The investments represent a level of capital spending more than double that of previous years, the company says.
Headquartered in Brampton, Ontario, StackTeck produces injection molds for end markets including thin-wall packaging and caps and closures, as well as medical and personal care/cosmetics.
Among the improvements were new machinery for the company's high-speed milling and electric discharge machining departments. StackTeck also announced it will add jobs in the first trimester of 2016 to complement the additional capacity.
StackTeck has seen significant growth in demand in recent years, Jordan Robertson, general manager of business development and marketing, told Plastics News. The company reported global sales of US$39.76 million (C$54.8 million) in 2015, with sales growth averaging 7.5 percent per year since 2011.
“We're fundamentally looking to not only keep up with that growth, but to outpace it and be able to handle surges and orders without having it affect our deliveries in a significant way,” Robertson said.
A portion of that growth has come from Mexico, where StackTeck recently strengthened its sales representation. The company added a second sales representative in Mexico two years ago, and last year added one working out of Colombia.
“We've seen a lot of growth in terms of our representation in the Latin American region,” Robertson said. “When I started at StackTeck 15 years ago we had one [sales representative] in Mexico handling all of Latin America.”
At Plastimagen StackTeck is displaying samples and steel components highlighting technology in food and beverage packaging, said Patricia Castaneda-Hayes, marketing coordinator business development. StackTeck also supplied a mold running in the Avance Industrial SA de CV booth. The demonstration is showcasing an in-mold-labeling system with a robot system supplied by Heino Ilsemann GmbH, running a high-speed 4 cavity cup mold with special labels from Verstraete IML.
