Next generation gains some control at Advanced Blending

After a day of work at Banta Healthcare Group Ltd., Mike Rasner would tinker with ways to dispense and mix materials in his garage, sometimes with four kids under the age of 5 underfoot.

At the time, Rasner was a plant engineer for the Neenah, Wis., site manufacturer of polyethylene products.

Nagged by what he considered shortcomings in the equipment on his day job, Rasner looked for ways to improve the reliability of getting material to the machine and blending in the proper ratio.

As he tended to little ones, Rasner built his first blender, including the algorithms and the controls. The blender became the predecessor of the Simplicity-brand product line, and one of those tykes just became president of the company that product helped launch, Advanced Blending Solutions LLC in Wallace, Mich.

ABS CEO Michael Rasner recently dropped the president part of his title, passing it to his son, Kane Rasner, who at age 27 is taking over day-to-day activities for the manufacturer and designer of material handling, blending, desiccant drying and controls for the plastics industry.

Kane Rasner is charged with growing the business organically and keeping the operation on its track of stability, organization and efficiency.

"I've been in the role for almost two months now, but I was broken in long before then," he said in a phone interview.

The company president sorted bolts and swept floors at ABS during the summers of his high school years. When he left for Michigan Technological University in Houghton, Mich. — his dad's alma mater — he planned to study medicine and become a doctor.

But the plan changed during winter break.

"I came home for Christmas, and my dad and I sat down and had a conversation," Kane Rasner recalled. "He said he thought I'd be an asset to the team and encouraged me to look at changing my major at school."

Kane Rasner said he didn't have to think for long about it.

"I said yes. There's daunting responsibility, but my mindset started to shift toward the business and everything it would take to move it forward," he explained.

Kane Rasner switched his area of study to engineering and worked on ABS projects on the side. Then, between his junior and senior years, he took an 18-month sabbatical to work more in-house at ABS.

"This was by design," Kane Rasner said. "I started in the controls department and spent a summer just wiring panels. That was to get a good technical base and really understand our equipment from the ground up. I spent a lot of time with the field service group doing some programming for our machines, too. So I got to see the equipment in action and any problems our customers were having. I did three to four years of a mix of field service and office work doing programming."

Kane Rasner then returned to MTU to earn his degree in chemical engineering. He graduated with a 4.0 and resumed his work as a controls engineer at ABS. He also spent time in project management and oversaw equipment installations.

Now it's time to join management.

"Some people might think 27 seems so young, but he's been working at this 10 years," Brent Berquist, vice president of sales and marketing, said in a phone interview. "He's a very intelligent, driven young man. We're in good hands."

Kane Rasner is getting ready to share the helm of a business that has outgrown its 65,000-square-foot facility and is starting to expand.

ABS' niche has been with fibers for the carpet industry, but it also serves customers in the foodservice, barrier film and medical film markets and is strong in compounding.

Two years ago, ABS purchased Thoreson McCosh Inc. in Troy, Mich., to offer existing customers economical stand-alone drying solutions and to introduce customers of the acquired company to ABS solutions in the areas of bulk solids handling, storage and blending.

Berquist said the addition of desiccant drying to the ABS portfolio lets it to go after more of the injection molding and blow molding markets.

The manufacturing assets of the Thoreson McCosh facility were moved to Wallace, where the company footprint is growing.

Land is being cleared for a series of expansions in the town of 100 people in the Upper Peninsula surrounded by state and national forests.

A 9,000-square-foot addition will be constructed in a couple months followed next year by another 58,000 square feet of manufacturing space and 18,000 square feet of offices.

Jobs will be created, too, at the company, which currently has 150 employees.

ABS is making a dedicated space to build, weld and assemble the McCosh line.

"We have a lot of welders, eight CNC machines, an automated laser table, powder coat booth, electro polishing and more. We do everything in-house," Berquist said. "We're a very vertically integrated organization."

ABS' outlook is good for the next two years or so, Berquist added.

Still, some company officials remember the tough times to get to this point.

After Mike Rasner graduated from MTU, he worked for Banta and then Pechiney Plastics Packaging Inc. in Neenah, which is now part of Amcor Group.

Rasner was in charge of blown film and cast film departments. He saw shortcomings with the material handling equipment on the market and eventually got together with a colleague in the sales unit of a material supply company to launch their own business, CRG Logics Inc., in about 2001.

Rasner was a 15 percent minority owner.

The blender Rasner had built in the garage became the predecessor to the Simplicity line of blenders. CRG Logics also did a "tremendous" number of control upgrades and retrofits.

"It was a fast-growing company. People loved the product. It was new and innovative," Berquist said.

Then, in 2008, the purchase orders dried up during the real estate bubble just as CRG Logics was moving into a new $1.5 million manufacturing facility. At this time, CRG became insolvent.

"But there were enough customers out there that didn't want CRG Logics, its products or Mike to go away," Berquist said. "They liked the technology and convinced Mike to basically leverage everything he and his family had, including significant acreage in the Upper Peninsula. They used it as collateral to purchase the intellectual property and inventory back from the bank and started Advanced Blending Solutions LLC."

Kane Rasner is impressed with the risks taken and decisions made by the company founder.

"My dad did a very good job of building a strong management group around him in sales, engineering, controls, manufacturing and project management," he said, adding a strong human resources department was paramount to the success.

The second-generation leader has some ideas for the company, too, especially after experiencing the supply chain problems last year amid a flurry of orders.

"It came in waves from every aspect," Kane Rasner said. "There was a time when raw metals were going to be short and now our current challenge is getting electrical components and parts. The lead times seem to keep going in the wrong direction."

Semiconductors are used in some parts ABS buys so they felt that pinch, too.

"We had to do some advanced planning to get equipment out the door as we were getting parts in," Kane Rasner said. "The biggest thing right now is getting back to center on our processes and continuing to improve on the integration of the Thoreson line in our production facility. We've come a long way in our efforts, and we're in a much better position than last year."

ABS' customers include many of the top 20 companies in all categories of plastic processing.

"It's gratifying to see these companies that we've formed relationships with grow and produce new products," Kane Rasner said. "It's great to be a part of the processes and technologies that are affecting people and communities every day."