Custom Profile buys plastic extrusion business; will move production to Juarez
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Custom Profile Inc. has acquired the plastic extrusion business from Wisconsin-based Bemis Manufacturing Company.
Theacquisition by the Michigan-based company was made to expand the manufacturer of plastic products’ customer-base and market segments, according to a statement.
With the acquisition, Custom Profile hopes to penetrate further into the health care and automotive markets with sanitary medical burette chambers and precisions clips for automotive seats, battery covers and other components.
“It’s just really a great opportunity for us,” said John Boeschenstein, CEO at Custom Profile.
Bemis Manufacturing, of Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, is well known for making toilet seats among its wide variety of products. But the company decided to sell off its profile extrusion business.
A broker contacted Custom Profile in February and talks began, Boeschenstein said.
A total of 12 manufacturing lines will be relocated from Bemis to Custom Molding. Ten of those lines will go into a newly leased 75,000-square-foot building in Grand Rapids. This facility is separate from the company’s current manufacturing site in Walker, about seven miles away.
Custom Profile will expand its existing business in areas such as office furniture and venture into automotive with the manufacture of products including precision clips for seats and battery covers, cable protectors and “highly engineered profiles.”
The other two lines, the medical portion of the acquired business, will relocate to Custom Profile’s Juarez, Mexico, facility.
The switch to Grand Rapids will begin in December and be completed by March as lines move and start running again.
Each medical line will move individually during the second quarter of next year to Juarez to ensure that production is not interrupted.
The medical lines, Boeschenstein explained, are duplicative and allow production to continue in Sheboygan while work to build a clean room and start production in Juarez takes place. Once everything is running smoothly there, the second line will be relocated.
“That gives the customer some reassurance that we’re going to use the exact same equipment, exactly the same process, exactly the same materials, exactly the same tooling so they know the quality of the product they get today is going to be duplicated,” he said.
Locating that portion of the business to Juarez, where Custom Profile has space, make sense because that facility will be closer to existing major customers in Puerto Rico and Costa Rica. And while Custom Profile has not been in the medical field before, the CEO said the company can tap into existing expertise to run the business.
“Our Juarez facility is an extremely, highly technical facility down there,” he said.
Custom Profile expects the deal to create about 30 jobs, including 25 direct hires, in the Grand Rapids area and about 15 jobs, including 12 direct hires, in Juarez, Boeschenstein said.
The company currently employs about 200 in Michigan and 100 in Mexico. While details of the deal were not announced, Custom Profile did say the transaction will increase sales by about 25 percent.
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