Rotomolding is the smallest of the plastics processes that Plastics News ranks each year. But being small doesn't mean it isn't interesting.
That branch of the industry has been undergoing some massive consolidation in the past few years with a few companies driving merger and acquisition activities in North America. The biggest rotomolder, Tank Holding Co. of Lincoln, Ne., has made at least 20 acquisitions in three years, most of them in rotational molding as it seeks to round up smaller companies in the sector.
And as Hollee Keller, PN's editorial research coordinator, notes in her blog about the new ranking, a lot of those acquisitions are coming from firms buying their own suppliers, so that, "what was once custom becomes captive. That seems to happen frequently in the rotomolding sector."
One recent example of that was in December when Kaivac Inc., a maker of industrial cleaning machinery, purchased its supplier Eger Products Inc.