Ohio-based CTC Plastics grows by knowing strengths, sticking to them

Dayton, Ohio — Success at Composite Technologies Co. LLC is realizing what the company does well and sticking to that.

And for the company that goes by CTC Plastics, it's recycling polypropylene, compression molding new plastic pallets and some outside custom molding work.

And nothing more.

There was a time when the company was pursuing injection molding, and there were thoughts of adding different types of resins to the recycling business.

But President Mike DeMatto, who doubles as chief operating officer, said that's not where CTC is going to have its biggest successes.

With a staff of about 80 workers these days, CTC occupies two buildings in Dayton totaling about 500,000 square feet.

"We realized somewhere along the way that you do what you're good at. And we're really good at compression molding and we're never really going to be a top-tier injection molder, so we shied away from that," DeMatto said.

"We don't want to be everything to everybody. We're going to stick with polypropylene. We found there's enough demand for polypropylene," he said.

Diversification for CTC means branching out into different PP formulations and using the company's relatively new twin screw compounding machine to provide new options along the way.

CTC Plastics pulls in post-industrial PP from throughout the Midwest, and DeMatto said there is no shortage of material. The ​ company has capacity to recycle about 100 million pounds of PP each year and expects to handle about 50 million to 60 million pounds this year.

About a third of the recycled plastic is used by the company to make a variety of plastic pallets on site.

"We have a very unique process where we don't have to pelletize it to make our pallets out of it. We can take the raw material and do some things to it and turn it into a pallet without having to add that step to pelletize," DeMatto said. "We do our little magic to it and turn it into a pallet."

Melted recycled plastic is cut into billets and placed into the bottom half of molds before large hydraulic presses stamp out new pallets. The company, which makes both nesting and stackable units, features nine out of the 10 most popular pallet sizes.

CTC, these days, is selling about 25,000 pallets per month but has a goal of 48,000 per month.

DeMatto said plastic pallets represent a small portion of the overall pallet market. "When you compare it to wood, it's minuscule. It's minuscule, but it's growing and it's growing substantially and it's forecast to continue to grow," he said.

While some CTC recycled plastic is used internally for pallets, a majority of the material the company processes is sold to other firms. "We ship everything from single gaylords to full truckloads, bulk trucks to rail," the COO said.

The company relies on extensive testing, through both a certified lab and inline sampling, to achieve quality that DeMatto claimed rivals virgin resin.

"We basically run our recycled business like you would a virgin business," DeMatto said. "We test every box of material that comes in here thoroughly.

"We are pretty big believers in minimizing variation on input and that really minimizes it on the output. So we do extensive testing. We make sure we get our raw material bucket set up correctly and that makes things work a lot better.

"Polypropylene, while the market is down, we found that if you are light on your feet and you are always looking to innovate and get better, you can compete very well," he said. "This area has always been good for polypropylene scrap for us to gather and recycle."

Automation, in a tough market for recycling, has helped CTC keep costs down.

"I think we're successful because we're small enough to operate very light, very quick. We're all passionate about this business," DeMatto said.

Jeff Cartmell has been with CTC for 19 years, working his way up to director of operations.

The company, he said, has found a sweet spot where the firm can take advantage of two different strengths. "We do compounding and compression molding, and it just seems to be a really good fit with polypropylene," he said.

Carlos Perez keeps busy as plant manager at CTC. For Perez, every day is different, and that's what he loves about his job. But that's not the only reason.

"I think it's many reasons, actually. The main thing is we are a family. We are a very good family. We work together very good, all have the same goals: quality, customer satisfaction," Perez said. "Every day changes. It's like a new challenge every minute."

CTC is owned by the Soin family, a name well-known in the Dayton area for philanthropic work and community involvement. The family's name is on a local hospital, a pediatric trauma and emergency center and the business school at nearby Wright State University.

"What we do is good for the environment, obviously, otherwise all this material would be going to possibly a landfill," Cartmell said on a recent Wednesday while watching pallets being made. "Makes you feel good what we're actually making a usable product for people."