Mecaplast Group, whose CEO is Plastics News's inaugural Automotive Newsmaker of the Year, plans to expand a Romanian injection molding facility acquired this fall, it said Nov. 7.
The 32,000-square-foot plant in Mioveni, was bought from local company Diaplast, as reported by Plastics News in mid-October. Mecaplast will start producing roof racks for the Dacia Duster there in early 2017.
Dacia assembles the Duster four miles from the Mecaplast factory, which stands on a 215,000-square-foot plot of land, 82 miles northwest of Romania's capital, Bucharest. “Several extensions are scheduled in a second phase,” a Mecaplast statement said.
Initially Mecaplast will use five injection molding machines that were included in the Diaplast purchase. Another 10 presses, ranging in clamping force from 300-1,100 metric tons, will be added over an unspecified length of time.
It expects the facility to produce revenues of between 17-20 million euros ($18.7 million-$20.0 million) in 2020. The plant will employ up to 100.
Plastics News this week named Mecaplast CEO Pierre Boulet as the first-ever Automotive Newsmaker of the Year.
“This is an honor that our editorial staff bestows on an individual who has been influential in automotive plastics during 2016,” said Plastics News Conference Director Joe Pryweller. “Mecaplast's emergence in the North American plastics industry played a key role in this honor.”
In October, Mecaplast announced plans to acquire $415 million Key Plastics LLC, of Livonia, Mich. The same month it opened its second manufacturing plant in Mexico, a brand new, $10 million facility, built to its specifications in Silao, in north-central Mexico.
In June 2014, the company, which was founded in Monaco in 1955, unveiled a $1.5 million upgrade of its first factory in Mexico, in Puebla, 300 miles southeast of Silao. Mecaplast employs 350 at the Puebla plant, acquired in 2002 after Mecaplast took over French supplier NEYR Group's sites in France, Spain, the Czech Republic and Mexico.
Customers of the Puebla plant include Chrysler Group, Nissan Motor Co., Audi AG and Volkswagen AG. The Silao plant will make air intake systems for General Motors Co.'s Chevrolet Captiva in North America starting in January, and it will begin making cam covers for Nissan USA in 2018 and interior trim for BMW AG's 3 Series in 2019.