This week at the Plastics News Executive Forum, Mack Molding Co. is joining an elite club.
On March 13, the Arlington, Vt.-based custom injection molder and contract manufacturer will officially pick up the trophy for our 2023 Sustained Excellence award.
This is an award for the best of the best. Only previous winners of PN's Processor of the Year award are eligible. Mack was the 2006 Processor of the Year.
Mack has reinvented its business in the nearly two decades since then. It launched a medical products group and established clean room molding and finishing operations. Mack also made investments that helped it transition into becoming a full-service vertically integrated manufacturer that can take customers' projects from concept to production.
The moves have paid off. Back in 2006, Mack had sales of $277 million and employed 1,850. Today, it has sales of about $600 million and more than 3,000 employees.
During the pandemic, Mack had some of its best years ever. Mack supplied components used in ventilators, vaccine production, air purifiers and backup power supplies for hospitals and cell towers. The company stayed open and busy, and everyone kept coming to work in person. The company followed protocols to keep everyone safe.
Mack was founded in 1920, so it's kind of a unicorn in the plastics industry — a processor that's already more than 100 years old. And perhaps even more notably, it's always been owned by the same family.
In fact, in 2020, third-generation family owner and CEO Don Kendall III handed over the reins of parent company Mack Group to the fourth generation, Will Kendall.
Mack has long been an active community partner, the kind of company that lends a hand and financial support to a wide variety of community projects. The Kendall family and Mack have also been key supporters of health care, most notably donating $5 million to expand the emergency department and renovate Southwestern Vermont Medical Center.
The company also is well known for its approach to sustainable manufacturing that made the company an Environmental Leader and Green Business Partner in the state of Vermont.
That civic mindedness is something that Mack has in common with the previous PN Sustained Excellence award winners: Plastic Components Inc., GW Plastics Inc., Plastikos Inc., Innovative Injection Technologies Inc. (i2tech) and Hoffer Plastics Corp. All six companies have a reputation that adds to the award's prestige.
Something else I consider cool about this award is it gives me a chance to visit some excellent companies, including some I've never been to in person before.
In my January visit to Mack, the highlight was spending time talking about the company over dinner, and again in the headquarters the next morning, with three key managers: President Jeff Somple, who has been with Mack for 35 years; Vice President of Sales and Engineering Joan Magrath, who has been with the company for 36 years; and Vice President of Procurement Marc Colety, who retired in late 2023 after 27 years at Mack.
We talked about how they manage people and how they've prepared the company for the transition to the next generation of leaders.
When Mack won the Processor of the Year, it was nice recognition of a major transition in the business that had happened just a few years earlier. In the 1990s, serving computer and business equipment customers had accounted for three-quarters of Mack's sales. Then, suddenly, nearly all that business was gone when the OEMs shifted all their manufacturing to China.
Mack didn't follow. It was an American manufacturing company with close ties to its workers and the communities where it did business. So Mack changed its strategy and reinvented itself. The company made smart bets on technology and capabilities, and the right customers and end markets, too.
It helped that the company was extremely conservative financially. That helped it weather tough times.
By the end of this year, Somple, Magrath and Colety all plan to be retired from Mack. They're excited about the company's future, and they've spent a lot of time on succession planning.
As Somple put it: "We have a great foundation in place. We have great customers. We have great employees. We have a great financial situation. ... I think we left it in a good spot. I'm excited to see the next 20 years."
I think it's quite appropriate that this trio is capping off their careers with the Sustained Excellence award.
Don Loepp is editor of Plastics News and author of the Plastics Blog.
