Plastek Industries named Plastics News Processor of the Year

Plastek Industries Inc. is celebrating its 65th anniversary this year. It was founded as a toolmaker in 1956 by Joseph Prischak in Erie, Pa.

Today the company, which is still on its second generation of Prischak family leadership, is known for all-around excellence. In fact, 2020 marks the third time that Plastek has been a finalist for the Processor of the Year award.

On March 18, at a virtual edition of the annual Executive Forum, Plastek finally joined the exclusive list of 27 companies that can claim the title of Plastics News Processor of the Year.

Four of Joseph's sons — Dennis, Douglas, Daniel and Donald — are among the key executive team members.

The group is steeped in the company culture. Even with college degrees, all are trained toolmakers. Dennis, the CEO, jokes that his father emphasized that good toolmakers can always find work.

Running a global packaging injection molder is a pretty good career choice, too. Dennis Prischak said he's excited about the future of the company.

"Our goal is to be a sustainable family business, for our family and the families of our current and future coworkers, and for the community — for all the right reasons," he said.

He's a little less sure about the reputation of the plastics industry, but that's something that Plastek is working on, especially when it comes to sustainability-related issues.

"I'm nervous from the standpoint that plastics gets a lot of bad PR. And it is disappointing that somehow we've lost, as an industry, control over the message."

The pandemic posed plenty of challenges, but Plastek had a good year.

"We were fortunate as heck to be considered essential. That's definitely not lost on us or our employees; they all get it. So I think we're very, very fortunate there. And, you know, we're looking to 2021 for some improvement and some growth," he said.

Like our other award finalists, Plastek went above and beyond the norm in the battle with COVID-19 last year, making tools for face shields in record time, then molding and donating 30,000 of them to local hospitals and first responders.

That wouldn't have been possible without the steps Plastek took to stay open.

"We really went overboard in making sure that we took care of making people safe, making sure they felt safe," Douglas Prischak said. In some ways, that was second nature for Plastek, a company that already has an on-site clinic, staffed by nurses and visited regularly by a doctor.

"Certainly it came in handy, having the doctors and nurses on staff going through all this COVID stuff. It really made a big difference," Daniel Prischak said.

Robert Welton, the company's director of human resources, health and safety, said Plastek's culture drove its COVID response.

"Clearly you could go to the CDC's [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] website, and you can look up what's required of a company. You could put out hand sanitizer, you could put out the cleaning wipes, you could give out the PPE [personal protective equipment] masks, but we went many steps further," Welton said. "And I'd say that we far exceeded that."

As an example, he cited Plastek's efforts to do contract tracing to follow up with workers who reported that they had COVID symptoms.

"I don't know how many companies went out and had half a dozen people Johns Hopkins-trained and -certified in contact tracing, either in conjunction with the Department of Health or as a substitute when the Department of Health was overwhelmed. I think that is really a high level, perhaps the highest level of response that a company can make," Welton said.

The family-owned custom injection molder is one of the largest plastics processors, and one of the biggest employers, in the Erie area, which is a hotbed for U.S. molding and tooling.

Many other plastics shops in the area were founded by former Plastek employees. But the Prischak family has no problem with that. In fact, they think it's only fair — because Plastek itself was founded when Joe Prischak was a young toolmaker who asked his boss for a raise and was turned down.

Joe, who just turned 90 years old, was named to the Plastics Hall of Fame this year. He's famous for his strong commitment to education. He was one of the driving forces behind Penn State Erie's four-year plastics engineering technology program, which had its first graduating class in 1989.

The strategy that got Plastek to where it is today — one of the top U.S. injection molders, plus plants in Europe and Latin America — is to focus on customers.

"Generally speaking, our strategy involves really, at the highest levels, to bring value to our customers, where and when they need us," Dennis Prischak said. "Not necessarily the lowest price, but solid value.

"We are customer-focused, sometimes to a fault. We probably do things, spend money, that maybe other suppliers don't. But we try to do that in the name of good customer support, good customer relations and long-term business. I mean, we have customers 30-40 years old, and not just little ones, big ones."

Plastek won the PN Excellence Award for customer relations in 2017 and for public service in 2018. This year Plastek impressed the judges in even more categories, including employee relations. Plastek's standard employee benefit package includes health insurance with low paycheck deductions and low out-of-pocket expenses, free dental and vision insurance, and a 401(k) with matching contributions.

A new area of strength is environmental performance. The rigid packaging molder is a minority owner of a $100 million plastics waste sorting plant now being established in Erie. Plastek sees that project as a way to secure a supply of the recycled plastics its consumer product customers are demanding.

"Sustainability is huge for us," Dennis Prischak said. "It checks the right boxes for us as an industry, us as a business, and our community will benefit. This is going to be really revolutionary."

Mick Shaw, a Plastek vice president based in the United Kingdom who has tracked the company's carbon footprint, greenhouse gas emissions and use of post-consumer resins for at least five years, noted that "every day now, the first word in every meeting [with customers] is sustainability."

Plastek uses about 15 million pounds of post-consumer resin annually, and Daniel Prischak said the company has learned a lot about molding with the material.

"We will be using more and more, and we're open to it, because I think we're getting a good feel for it and we know what to expect," Daniel Prischak said.

"And moving forward, I think we'll continue to work with everybody and really push it. It may take pushing from our end, to go out to customers and say, 'Hey, here's your parts in this PCR [post-consumer resin] vs. virgin. Are you interested in running in it? It is going to be a big part of the future,'" he said.

The Processor of the Year award is open to all private and public companies or corporate operating divisions engaged in North American plastics processing for at least the past five years.

There are seven criteria, and they cover nearly every major aspect of running a business: Financial performance, quality, customer relations, employee relations, environmental performance, industry/public service and technological innovation.