Honor Plastics & Molding Inc. has acquired Kowalski Molding Service Inc., a 1.7-acre site and a 21,600-square-foot building for $2 million.
On a rental basis, Honor Plastics assumed responsibilities for operations of the Kowalski shop in September, pending completion of the business transaction on Nov. 17.
About 15 miles separate the 22,000-square-foot Honor facility in Ontario, Calif., and the Kowalski location in Riverside.
Dennis Savalia, Honor Plastics president and CEO, made the deal with Stanley Kowalski, who started the business in 1985 and incorporated it in 1986. Kowalski's son, Jon, has managed the business for his father since 2009.
Savalia projects that Honor Plastics will record 2017 sales of $3.2 million, and the Kowalski business will add another $1 million in annual sales.
"It will be more down the road," Savalia said in a telephone interview.
Together the businesses employ about 30 with Savalia expecting to hire up to 10 more.
"I need to expand and replace equipment" in Riverside, he said. "We will have four big presses."
Currently, the Riverside plant has 10 injection molding machines of 55-390 tons along with two computer numerical control machines, four electrical discharge machines — three sinker and one wire — and a grinder.
In September, Honor Plastics in Riverside took delivery of a 715-ton model BS-650 press from China's Borch Machinery Co. Ltd. through International Plastics Equipment of Canyon Lake, Calif.
In December, the Riverside facility will get a 715-ton press from Hong Kong-based L.K. Technology Holdings Ltd. that was built in Ningbo, China. L.K. Systems of Ladera Ranch, Calif., is the equipment distributor in North America.
Savalia will travel to Ningbo in January to monitor turnkey trials of five molds for making plastic hollow bricks with a customer-supplied resin with a PVC-based formula for the commercial construction market. The project has a potential annual value of $5 million.
L.K. is building the molds in Shenzhen. Testing will occur on 815- and 715-ton L.K. presses in Ningbo. Upon satisfactory completion of the trials, L.K. will ship the completed machines to the Riverside site.
In the market, a contractor will reinforce the hollow bricks with steel and cement. The flat outer face prevents moisture from reaching the steel reinforcements.
With the Kowalski assets, "we may build molds in-house," Savalia said. "Some customers require us to build molds in the U.S. and not offshore." His staff in Riverside includes one mold maker.
At this time Savalia is not making changes at the Ontario plant, which operates 15 injection molding machines of 55-440 tons.
After major health issues, Kowalski, 63, had refocused his intuitive mold making and engineering talents beginning in 2009 to a hobby: building, racing and owning cars now including two turbocharged Mazda Miatas and a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution.
"I won a master event every year since I started racing in 2009," and currently have 80 first place trophies, he said.
At his shop, Kowalski produced components for Toro Co. irrigation systems, terming it "a good gig until they combined [operations] in El Paso." Over 20 years, he produced 150-million acetate fittings for the Weathermatic water-conserving systems and eventually sold those molds to the customer.