Aurora, Ohio — Automation Plastics Corp. has survived some recent challenges and is growing once again.
Automation Plastics is a custom injection molder based in Aurora. The firm opened in 1980 and has been owned by Harry Smith since 1999.
In early 2021, Automation Plastics gained a large piece of business making parts for dispenser pumps, which were in high demand as hand sanitizer and similar products were needed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Automation Plastics hired more workers and purchased a nearby building, which it had been renting, to handle the additional work.
But by late 2022, demand for dispensers declined, causing Automation Plastics to lose a lot of the work it had won. "We were facing some big challenges," Smith said in a recent interview in Aurora. "Things were pretty tough there for a while."
Automation Plastics had to "reinvent itself and find new markets," sales engineer Matt Davidoff said. Since the sales loss in late 2022, Automation Plastics has found new opportunities in markets ranging from automotive to water filtration to natural gas metering.