A $13M investment unites Helm Tool, IMT under one roof

Helm Tool Co. Inc. and Intermolding Technology Inc. are under one soon-to-be renovated roof as a $13 million investment to move and grow enters its final stages at a 94,000-square-foot facility in Schaumburg, Ill.

The sister companies with a total of 74 employees had operated about 3 miles from each other, shipping molds back and forth for more than a decade between Helm Tool in Elk Grove Village, Ill., and IMT in Des Plaines, Ill.

Founded in 1977 by Helmut Mueller, who had emigrated from Germany in 1965, Helm Tool builds a wide range of molds from simple to complex tooling for the automotive, electrical, electronics, medical, optical and consumer products markets.

In 1993, Helm Tool invested in two molding machines to sample and test the tools it fabricated. Then, a customer gave the business two more presses to mold his parts. This led to the start of American Injection Molding in 2005 — it was renamed Intermolding Technology in 2012 — at a nearby facility in Des Plaines.

Now equipped with 19 presses from 35-600 tons of clamping force for production molding, sampling and prototyping, IMT serves the defense, industrial, consumer products, electrical, medical and optical industries.

Mueller, the company president whose design of cutlery molds for the consumer products market brought a lot of business, started looking for a place to consolidate under one roof around 2015.

However, the facilities for sale were too small to fit both companies or too expansive to fill or the cost of the parcel of land to build new was out of budget. Mueller needed to muster years of patience.

"One day a realtor called out of the blue and said they had a building that met our needs across the board. It was truly the space I had envisioned," Mueller said in an email about the warehouse purchased in 2019 near Chicago O'Hare International Airport.

The building needed work so the investment continued with $5 million of improvements made first to meet plumbing, electrical and flooring needs of the molding operation, which moved to the new facility in 2020.

The company also has added 13 molding machines — three new — to the business since it relocated, Mueller said.

After more electrical upgrades, the mold shop moved to the new facility last year.

"We are currently installing a new roof before the upcoming winter," Mueller said. "Not including the additional minor projects we are working on, total investment including the building is $13 million. The whole undertaking was a challenge much more than I anticipated. And now more than three years later I'm just about done moving in to the building as I had envisioned."

The relocation and consolidation have proved beneficial in several ways, he added.

"The biggest improvement we have seen is that instead of having to drive things miles down the road, we can just forklift something down the hall," Mueller said. "Our communication and ability to use the resources of two companies under one roof has proven to be nothing but beneficial. If a tool goes down on the IMT side, it can easily be transported and repaired on the Helm Tool side. If we finish a tool on the Helm Tool side, it can easily be taken to the IMT side and put in a press for prototyping or tryout. Having all these resources at our disposal has proven not only valuable to us, but most importantly our customers and their success."

The expansion also has created 12 new positions in recent years with Mueller describing the outlook for both companies as "great."

"Now that the heavy investments have been made and all the right tools, equipment and machinery are in place, we have all the tools needed to best serve our customer," he said. "We are continuing to invest in our workforce to ensure that we are hiring the next generation, as well as investing in their education and training to ensure that they know how to properly run the new equipment. Overall this new equipment paired with skilled operators allows us to make molds faster, more cost-effective and more efficiently."

A grand opening celebration to tour the facility and meet the team is scheduled from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 16 at the home of Helm Tool and Intermolding Technology, 1420 Wright Blvd.