Ohio pallet maker spends millions on automation expansion

Dayton, Ohio — An Ohio compression molder is spending $4 million to not only dramatically expand production but also automate a portion of the company's pallet making business.

Composite Technologies Co., which goes by CTC Plastics, has spent two years planning for a new hydraulic press in Dayton and the last five months actually installing equipment, which is expected to be fully operational by the end of this year.

The company makes pallets and is a custom molder of other parts used in a variety of other segments, including telecommunications, utility construction, waste management, lawn and garden, sporting goods industries including automotive, and agriculture.

The addition of a new 2,500-ton press made by Macrodyne Technologies Inc. of Concord, Ontario, allows CTC to introduce an automated process for the first time.

Limited production is underway. When fully operational, CTC expects the new press will be able to produce up to 800 pallets per day and around 240,000 per year. That's on top of the 450,000 or so pallets the company already produces on existing presses.

CTC President Craig Dixon said the project allows the company to continue meeting the growing needs of the pallet market while also addressing the difficulty of finding employees these days.

"The goal," he said, "was safety, productivity, efficiency and repeatability so that we are getting good, consistent quality products off that press.

"We just want to continue to upgrade our fleet of machines and make sure we maintain a good set of equipment to support our customers," Dixon said during a recent in-plant interview. "We want to begin to turn over our fleet of machinery and not just sit here with a fleet of aging presses."

By introducing automation for the first time, he said, "we hedge against labor shortages. We provide consistent repeatability."

Karen Pierce, sales and marketing manager for CTC, believes the company is the first to use automation into this particular segment of the compression molding market.

"I don't know of any [other companies], but it doesn't mean there's not somebody out there that's going along this journey with us, same as us," Dixon added.

Automation comes in the form a set of robots that feed melted billets of resin into the mold and then remove finished pallets.

Hino Pringnitz is a senior developer with Macrodyne and has been in Dayton for the past four months helping to get the new machine up and running.

"This is a very unique setup," he said. "The press actually is fairly simple, but the cell attached to it is what's unique. We're integrating with the client's material process to bring the plastic into the press automatically, remove the pallets and perform the trimming and inspection operation."

CTC Operations Manager Jeff Cartmell added his perspective about how automation fits in with the workforce.

"I think there will always going to be products that we're going to have to utilize our workforce that we've got here. But to do some of the more basic pallet type of operations, this is definitely the wave of the future," he said.

CTC, which also compounds resin for other companies to use, uses polypropylene and high-density polyethylene to make products. The company buys recycled resin from outside sources and processes post-industrial scrap itself in Dayton.

The company uses about 3 million pounds of resin a month with about 70 percent being polypropylene and 30 percent high density polyethylene.

"Our goal is to provide a high-quality pallet made from recycled material, which would differentiate us from virgin," Dixon said. "Ultimately, it circles back to supporting our customers."

Deciding to add automation, while continuing to run existing presses that require labor, was an outgrowth of the labor difficulties companies faced during and after COVID-19, the president said. "Finding employees was a challenge. Automation is a possible solution to the challenge."

CTC has about 80 employees, and Dixon said that number will remain the same even after the new press begins full operation.

CTC makes pallets for both the domestic and export markets.

"There's a number of players, a lot of plastic pallet manufacturers, both domestic and international, so it's price-competitive. But it continues to grow, and so there's opportunities for growth within the market. And our goal is to provide a high-quality pallet made from recycled material, which should differentiate us from virgin users," Dixon said.

CTC make plenty of pallets in the industry's common sizes, but the company also has found a niche in producing pallets that are less common in the marketplace. "Our strategy is to grow along with the market and then selectively add tooling to fill in for captive opportunities," he said.