Engineered Profiles LLC has purchased the assets of a tooling operation that will become part of the plant it is opening in southern Ohio.
The acquisition of Co-Ex Plastic Tooling Inc. comes less than a month after Engineered Profiles announced it is retrofitting a former Dow Inc. extrusion facility in Hanging Rock, Ohio, near Ironton.
"All [Co-Ex] employees have been offered positions with EP and the majority have elected to join us at the Ironton facility," Matt Fenneman, vice president of sales and marketing for Engineered Profiles, told Plastics News in a Dec. 2 email.
He declined to disclose details of the sale or how many people Co-Ex employed, though he did say Roger and Dorothy Smith, who had owned and operated the company since 1996, will make the transition to Engineered Profiles. Co-Ex manufactured dies for siding, tubing, sheet and profiles, cap stock and refrigerator gaskets. Its toolroom and extrusion equipment will be moved to Hanging Rock.
Co-Ex, which was located about 40 miles southeast of Hanging Rock in Milton, W.Va., "previously provided extrusion tooling and a small amount of toll production to a number of plastic extruders in North America as a service business," Fenneman said. "Through this acquisition CoEx's talent and toolroom will be dedicated solely to EP's internal needs."
Engineered Profiles is based in Columbus, Ohio. The 93,000-square-foot Hanging Rock facility will become its second plant. Fenneman said the company expects to begin operations there by the end of January with the tool shop and two extrusion lines, "and rapidly grow that to 12 lines over the next several months." He added, "Staffing will begin at 20 to 30 people and grow to 50 to 60 incrementally as lines are added."