Westfall Technik buys medical molder Delta Pacific, subsidiaries

Las Vegas-based Westfall Technik Inc. has acquired Delta Pacific Products and its wholly owned subsidiaries, Prism Plastics Products Inc. and NxTBio Technologies, to continue growing in the medical device and health markets.

Westfall has made 14 acquisitions in less than two years, focusing on plastics firms in the tooling, medical, packaging and consumer products sectors.

Founded in 1988, Delta is an injection molder and contract manufacturer for mostly medical device and life sciences OEMs, such as Abbott, Boston Scientific, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. Delta also has customers in the aerospace, technology and consumer products markets but mostly serves established OEMs and the large and growing medical device startup businesses in the San Francisco Bay area.

A combination of Delta's business niches, customers and locations made it an attractive acquisition, Merritt Williams, Westfall Technik's vice president of sales and marketing, said in a phone interview.

"To grow our health care group, we've got to be where the customers are, and that's the Bay area, Minneapolis and New England," Williams said, adding that NPI Medical in Connecticut was previously acquired.

Delta has U.S. facilities in Union City and Fremont, ​ Calif., which are 33,000 square feet and 20,000 square feet, respectively. The Union City site employs about 150 while the Fremont plant had four employees when it opened in March 2018.

Delta's footprint will expand to scale up alongside its customers, Westfall said in a May 10 news release.

Delta President and CEO Yuan Tian chose to join Westfall Technik to expand its services and production capacity.

"We can now offer our customers high-volume production, device assembly and rapid precision toolmaking throughout the United States and through Westfall's extensive sales team, can offer our services to customers we could never previously reach," Tian said in the release.

The acquisition gives Westfall Technik a presence near the Minneapolis area through Delta's subsidiary, New Richmond, Wis.-based Prism Plastics, which is an injection molder for the medical, consumer electronics, security and recreational vehicle markets. Founded in 1999, Prism has 19,080 square feet of space, 40 employees and 18 presses ranging from 18-385 tons, molding mostly engineering thermoplastics.

Westfall also acquired Delta subsidiary NxTBio, which is based in Claremont, Calif., and has a second manufacturing facility in Tijuana, Mexico, producing products used in life science labs such as pipettes, filter tips, strip tubes, vials, multi-well plates and sample containers.

Westfall Technik says its ability to engineer and build high-volume production systems will accelerate the growth of the subsidiary's products sold under the BioPointe Scientific, Goldengate BioScience and National Scientific brands.

Westfall says it can provide its acquired businesses competitive advantages, such as automation, correlative molding processes and effective Industry 4.0 concepts, and the customers of its acquired businesses with decreased time to market, traceability from pellet to pallet, and supply chain security.

Terms of the Delta deal were not disclosed. Westfall was represented by MBS Advisors of Florence, Mass., in the transaction.

When Westfall Technik formed in 2017, founder and managing director Brian Jones had said the goal was to create a world-class company to serve market leaders at a significantly higher quality and productivity level. The firm immediately began growing by acquisition and hasn't slowed down.

Westfall now operates more than 1 million square feet of manufacturing space and continues to look for more deals. The holding firm is strategically going after specific assets, locations, and intellectual property.

"We're technology and solution-set oriented," Williams said. "Our pipeline is highly active as we look to add business units in healthcare, packaging and technology. It's got to fit with technology being the driver."

Westfall Technik doesn't plan to reduce the workforce at the acquired businesses.

"We've learned every business has its own heartbeat and culture," Williams said. "We want to leverage skill sets and assets. Employee reduction is never part of our plan."

Weeks after forming, Westfall Technik bought Fairway Injection Molds Inc. in Walnut, Calif., and Integrity Mold Inc., in Tempe, Ariz., in separate transactions. Fairway produces multi-cavity injection molds including single face, stack, high-speed unscrewing and multi-shot molds while Integrity processes thermoplastics on electric injection molding machines of 55-400 tons and makes tools in-house and with overseas partners. The two businesses employed about 130 people and had annual sales of about $30 million.

Two more deals followed in February 2018 with the acquisitions of 10 Day Parts Inc., formerly Advanced Technology Inc., of Corona, Calif., and Elfy's Inc. of Hayward, Calif. 10 Day Parts guarantees product development, mold construction, and manufacturing for up to 2 million plastic parts within 10 working days.

Elfy's develops prototypes and mold designs and produces components with eight injection molding machines in 12,000 square feet of space.

In March 2018, Westfall Technik Inc. added AMS Plastics Inc. of El Cajon, Calif., and AMS's maquiladora Operaciones de Clase Mundial SA de CV. The businesses operate 32 injection molding machines with clamping forces of 50-1,000 tons and have a 4,000-square-foot Class 8 clean room. About 65 percent of the business is medical followed by consumer goods at 25 percent and packaging at 10 percent.

With the acquisition of AMA Plastics Inc. of Riverside, Calif., in April 2018, Westfall Technik grew in size and scale and could handle larger medical and packaging projects. The business had 435 permanent and temporary employees when acquired operating 95 presses with clamping forces of 35-720 tons, including 16 machines in an expandable ISO Class 8 clean room with the potential for assembly functions. With estimated sales of $61.5 million, AMA Plastics ranked 114th among North American injection molders, according to Plastics News.

Then, in May 2018, Westfall Technik acquired NPI/Medical of Ansonia, Conn., which had 90 employees operating 46 injection molding machines in a 66,000-square-foot manufacturing facility.

The firm was busy growing in October 2018 with two deals, including one that brought Westfall Technik its first injection molding factory in the Midwest. That happened with the acquisition of Amaray's North American packaging operations in Elizabethtown, Ky., and Pittsfield, Mass. The plants employed about 165 people who ran 66 injection molding machines in a total of 285,000 square feet of manufacturing. Amaray had sales of $49 million in its most recent full year, according to the Plastics News injection molders ranking.

Also, in October 2018, the firm acquired mold maker Extreme Tool & Engineering Inc. in Wakefield, Mich., which had 60 employees and $14.1 million in tooling sales at the time, according to the Plastics News ranking of mold makers.

In December 2018, Westfall bought Mold Hotrunner Solutions Inc., a company in Georgetown, Ontario, specializing in hot runners and injection presses for micromolding. MHS developed the M3 micromolding machine, which it says is the only dedicated micromolding machine capable of producing micro, direct-gated plastic parts on a large scale.

The acquisition of Mold Craft Inc., a Willernie, Minn.-based maker of injection molds for micromolding and high-cavitation applications, followed in January. The business operates in a 15,000-square foot space with 45 employees.

In February, Westfall acquired Precision Injection Molding Co. (Pimco) of Corona, Calif., which makes plastic parts primarily for use in the medical, telecommunication, consumer durable and light industrial markets. The processor operates 27 injection molding presses with a clamping force range of 25-275 tons.

Most recently, in March, Westfall Technik acquired Tempe, Ariz.-based Micro Tech Southwest Inc. The business focuses on medical and consumer products with about 80 employees and 24 injection molding machines housed in a 58,000-square-foot plant.