Painesville, Ohio — Refocusing and expanding a business are big enough challenges in normal times. They're even more difficult in a post-pandemic market.
But that's exactly what thermoset molder and compounder Mar-Bal Inc. has done. Since 2017, the Chagrin Falls, Ohio-based firm has moved electrical up to its No. 1 end market, replacing appliances, which remains the firm's second-largest market.
"We've had good growth coming out of COVID," President Scott Balogh said in a recent interview at the firm's plant in Painesville. "We've benefited from the reelectrification of America. There are a lot of data centers that need backup because computing requires so much power. So we make parts for battery storage and insulators and even for wind farms and solar farms."
In addition to its molding work, Mar-Bal is a producer of bulk molding compounds, thermoset raw materials that are used to make thermoset parts. The firm operates its compounding unit as Altraset Composite Technologies.
"There's been a lot of consolidation in thermoset molding," Balogh said. "We're one of the last vertically integrated thermoset compounders and molders."
Mar-Bal started operations in Painesville in 2018 at a former Core Systems injection molding plant that had been empty for three years. Mar-Bal was able to recruit about 20 former Core workers back to the 110,000-square-foot site, which now employs about 100.
In early 2023, Mar-Bal opened a new production site in nearby Solon, Ohio. That 20,000-square-foot location makes composite materials and employs 15. The firm also has a research lab at its headquarters location in Chagrin Falls. All three Ohio sites are in the Greater Cleveland area.
The road to recovery wasn't an easy one for Mar-Bal. In addition to the challenges of the pandemic, the firm had to deal with supply chain issues that struck plastics and chemicals markets in early 2021 after a winter storm hit Texas.
"We were short on chopped glass fiber and a lot of other materials," molding plant manager Aaron Bable said in Painesville. "We were scheduling week to week for about six months. Whatever materials we had, that was what we could make that week."
Bable added that the inventory situation had improved by late 2022. Balogh said he was proud that Mar-Bal never had to place force majeure sales limits on any of its products during the supply chain crunch.
Mar-Bal is very much a family business for the Baloghs. Scott's father Jim founded the firm in 1970 after emigrating from his native Hungary.
In the next generation, Scott's son Micah is a process engineering manager at the Painesville plant, while his daughter Maia Banks works in product engineering at the site. Scott Balogh's niece Jenny Balogh works in materials control in Painesville, and her husband, Guillermo Mota, works in IT there.
Plant manager Bable also has made Mar-Bal a family business. His son Zach is a manufacturing intern at the Painesville site. Zach Bable had trained at Auburn Career Center, a local trade school that Mar-Bal has supported for many years.
Jim Balogh was a tooling engineer for Glastic Corp. when he founded Mar-Bal in Cleveland along with Frank Martinek, a paint chemist with Sherwin-Williams. In Mar-Bal company lore, Jim Balogh used an old Volkswagen to drag a compression press into a manufacturing space in the Flats, an industrial neighborhood in Cleveland, in the firm's early days.
In late 2020, Mar-Bal purchased Lattice Composites LLC, a Riverside, Calif.-based epoxy and polyester compounder. Lattice moved its advanced manufacturing equipment and staff from California to Ohio. The deal expanded Mar-Bal's composite technologies to include Lattice's epoxy chemistry systems.
"Diversifying has been our big focus for the last four or five years," Scott Balogh said. "We've seen a lot of growth and now can offer total systems support."
Compounding plant manager John Slupecki said Mar-Bal's compounding production roughly has doubled in the last six to seven years. "We can customize raw materials and help our customers launch new products," he added.
In addition to its Ohio locations, Mar-Bal operates manufacturing plants in Dublin, Va., and Cuba, Mo., as well as a plant and sales office in China. The firm has installed 10 new molding machines in total at its plants in the last five years, Balogh said. Mar-Bal plans to install an additional molding machine in Painesville by mid-2024.
Mar-Bal also has a goal of making a carbon-neutral composite, Balogh said. The firm recently surpassed $100 million in annual sales. In addition to electrical and appliance, Mar-Bal serves the industrial, foodservice, transportation and construction industries.