Private investors have purchased a DME facility in Windsor, Ontario, that had been slated to close, renaming the now privately owned company CMI Tooling & Components Inc.
"The site continues to serve the mold making industry, manufacturing standard and custom mold bases as well as special machining services," Gary Thibert, co-owner and president of CMI, told Plastics News.
"Employees have begun to return to work and service levels are growing as demanded by the industry," Thibert said.
As a former senior employee at the plant under DME, Thibert said it was a "shocker … that they decided to consolidate businesses and get out of mold base manufacturing altogether. Because we had some really good customer clients and good reputation."
Thibert convinced Hillenbrand Inc. to sell the business turnkey to him and his partners within a month of the announcement that it was closing, he said.
The closure would have laid off about 40 employees, Thibert said, including "highly skilled machinists … that people in Windsor would die to have. People buy businesses like this just for their employees."
Hillenbrand had announced plans to cut about 5 percent of its workforce in February.
The facility underwent many acquisitions and name changes over the last 40 years, he said, but often customers and suppliers still called it "CMI," its original name.
"Everybody still called them CMI … so it was like free branding. We just said, let's go back to the original."
After the private investors closed on the purchase of the plant in April, Thibert reintroduced the company to old and potential new customers at in May at NPE2024 in Orlando, Fla., he said.
"It couldn't have happened at a better time. … And the response was incredible."
Customers had also been shocked to lose their mold base supplier and were worried about finding new providers, Thibert said.
"Our customers [were] really peeved when they found out that they no longer have us as a service, and support network. Because they rely on us to do the custom mold bases. … They need the product that we've been making them for all these years."
Since the company is no longer associated with the DME brand, Thibert said, that it allows it to work with other major suppliers instead of just using DME components.
"Now we can implement [and] incorporate components from any standard component manufacturer," he said, allowing CMI to be more price competitive. "We're going to continue to service and support plastic injection molding industries … with the intention to expand by acquiring machinery for automation and be able to better serve customers in the future."