Joining two northern Michigan tooling operations, Bridge Tool and Die Inc. has acquired American Die & Mold Inc.
The purchase of American Die, located across the street from Bridge Tool's original facility in Buckley, Mich., expands the company's capabilities in machining injection molds and adds computer numerically controlled milling and related equipment.
“We had been using [American Die] as an overflow on our machining work for years, for about 10 years, so we had known them and at the time it seemed to be the next step,” Greg Mort, Bridge Tool's business manager, said in a phone interview.
The combined company will benefit from Bridge Tool's strengths in marketing and the discipline it has developed through its focus on carbide tooling, Mort said.
“When we purchased American Die & Mold, we implemented that entire quality strategy over at their facility,” he said. “So we're basically taking the discipline, if you will, on tracking orders from raw material all the way out the door, and then keeping track of things that we run into in between, and monitoring the performance of operators and how we improve. So basically the details work of it.”
The expanded company employs 18, with around $2 million in sales. The acquisition doubled Bridge Tool's footprint to just under 10,000 square feet, split between the two buildings.
“We used to have a facility that we did carbide and steel work in, and when we bought this we moved all of the steel work into the injection molding facility, so we have a carbide building and then a steel building,” Mort said.