AKRON, OHIO - Plastics News announces the four finalists for its 2002 Processor of the Year Award: medical molder Inland Technologies Inc., automotive supplier Miniature Precision Components Inc., and Precise Technology Inc., and Tech Group Inc. — two well-known companies that focus on molding thin-wall, engineered disposable items at high volumes.

Back as a finalist for the second year in a row is Inland, a small injection molder in Fontana, Calif. The winner last year was Cascade Engineering Inc. of Grand Rapids, Mich.

Plastics News will announce the 2002 award winner Jan. 27 in Phoenix, during an evening reception at its Executive Forum 2003 at Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort. The winning processor also will be profiled in the Feb. 3 issue.

Inland, Miniature Precision, Precise and Tech were selected from 17 nominees by a committee of Plastics News editorial staffers. In a change, the award has its first co-sponsor — Ernst & Young Corporate Finance Inc. — whose officials also helped the judges to analyze financial performance for the companies.

This year, nine candidates nominated themselves; suppliers nominated the other eight. The editorial staff reviewed materials sent by each nominated company; interviewed customers, suppliers and analysts; searched news reports; and researched public health, safety and environmental records.

Now, the award project’s coordinators, senior reporters Bill Bregar and Joseph Pryweller, are visiting each of the four finalists to gain further insights to help make the final decision.

Plastics News began its annual Processor of the Year award in 1996. The award honors a company in North America that has displayed excellence in seven categories: financial performance, quality, customer relations, employee relations, environmental re-cord, public service efforts and technological innovation. The judging committee assessed the nominees primarily on their performance from Sept. 1, 2001, to Sept. 1, 2002, although longer-term performance also is considered.

The contest is open to private or public companies and operating divisions engaged in North American plastics processing for at least five years.

This year’s winner will join a respected group. Past winners include Cascade Engineering, Tessy Plastics Corp. of Elbridge, N.Y.; Royal Group Technologies Ltd. of Woodbridge, Ontario; Courtesy Corp. of Buffalo Grove, Ill.; Nypro Inc. of Clinton, Mass.; and Bryan Custom Plastics of Bryan, Ohio.

Here are snapshots of the four finalists, in alphabetical order:



Inland Technologies Inc.

The California injection molder has earned a good reputation with its medical customers since its founding just nine years ago.

Inland is by far the smallest of the finalists, at $15 million in 2001 sales — 80 percent from medical products — and about 100 employees. The company reported a major, 41 percent increase in profit last year, despite the poor overall economy. But Inland produces critical medical parts — and the company gained glowing comments from customers, which include some major medical companies.

Those plastic products have to be perfect. Inland supplies parts used in critical applications such as systems for heart surgery and blood filtration. Quality was a top priority from day one, as Inland actually passed ISO 9000 certification before the company officially opened for business.

Inland’s success has a lot to do with hands-on management by its founders, Gary Hengeveld and Glenn Crossno, veterans of Southern California injection molding companies.

Inland continues to be in an expansion mode. The company opened a second plant in Fontana last year and continues to work on opening a plant on the East Coast.

Employee turnover is consistently low, and Inland has hired people this year. A local business newspaper named Inland one of the “Best Companies to Work For” in California’s Inland Empire region.

Inland was nominated by its public relations company, Creative Productions of Long Beach, Calif.



Miniature Precision Components Inc.

A remarkable company in technology and innovation, MPC is located in a tiny, nondescript town near the Wisconsin-Illinois border. Surrounded by acres of dairy farms and the resort community of Lake Geneva, Wis., MPC is an anomaly in a region where manufacturing does not dominate.

The Walworth, Wis.-based company, primarily a supplier of engine and other under-the-hood automotive parts, has pioneered product and equipment advances during its 30-year history. Founder Jay Brost patented one of the first plastic check valves for automotive engines, a product now used regularly on most North American vehicles.

Its design and engineering staff helped develop several other pace-setting products, including a heated PCV valve and a quick-connection system for vacuum lines. And the company is one of the few suppliers in North America to offer suction blow molding, a process that makes strong, seamless parts for large-diameter tubing.

The company’s capabilities extend to injection molding, where MPC recently has completed a new facility in Walworth for engine covers, and to tooling, where MPC also has expanded to a new building.

The company entered the medical market with a new subsidiary, Geneva Medical Products LLC in Prairie du Chien, Wis., and continues to ramp up its longtime molding facility in Santa Ana, Mexico.

The company’s commitment to capital expenditures — MPC has invested $32.5 million over the past five years — has translated to sales growth. The company records sales increases of about 15 percent nearly every year and expects sales to exceed $130 million in 2002, its best year to date.

The privately owned company, still run by the Brost family, believes in giving back to community. Through November 2002, MPC donated $12,200 and raised another $13,839 in fund-raisers for charity and community needs during the year. Brost’s copper sculptures have been donated to various civic groups, and one is displayed outside the local high school.

The company’s 1,600 employees play a major role in MPC’s growth. Work teams at MPC’s seven manufacturing plants are recognized for their suggestions to improve efficiency. Lean manufacturing is a major focus, and MPC has begun using its Web site to field ideas for continuous improvement.

MPC prides itself on preserving a family-oriented, small-town focus, even with its larger ambitions for growth. It has succeeded on both fronts.



Precise Technology Inc.

Precise, based in North Versailles, Pa., began its evolution into a premier U.S. injection molder and mold maker in 1996, when the company more than doubled its size by purchasing Tredegar Molded Products from Tredegar Industries Inc. Now the company has doubled its size again, through its recent purchase of LLS Corp./Courtesy Corp. at a bankruptcy auction.

Precise has opened dedicated plants for specific customers, including a Holden, Mass., plant molding packaging for Gillette Co.’s Mach 3 razor and the new Venus razor; a plant in Streetsboro, Ohio, that molds the Diaper Genie for Playtex Products Inc.; and a Precise IML site in Swedesboro, N.J., that molds baby-wipe boxes for Procter & Gamble Co. Precise, under the leadership of plastics veteran John R. Weeks, president and chief executive officer, focuses on thin-wall, long-run disposable injection molded prod-- ucts and assemblies with a high engineering content.

Strong points include technology and automation — especially on the long-run machines dedicated to one customer.

For example, Precise IML claims to be the largest U.S. injection molding plant to do in-mold labeling. Robots place the polypropylene baby-wipe boxes onto conveyors, then they pass under a vision-inspection station and through a wall to a robot sorting station, with no contact from human hands.

Buying Courtesy for $130 million at the Aug. 22 auction was a bold move. Precise had $147 million in 2001 sales. Now the combined sales will be nearly $300 million, from 425 injection presses worldwide.

Courtesy gives consumer-products specialist Precise a much stronger presence in medical and health-care markets, and food and beverage. Before the deal, Precise generated 71 percent of its sales from personal-care and consumer products, a number that now falls to about 50 percent for the two combined firms.

Backing Precise in the acquisition is Chicago investment firm Code Hennessy & Simmons LLC, which purchased Precise in 2000 from longtime owner Mentmore Holdings Co.

Weeks said that Precise’s management team can restore Courtesy, which had been owned by investment house Hicks Muse Tate & Furst Inc. Precise officials moved with lightning speed to get rid of excess mold-making capacity, announcing in November the company would close four plants and lay off 150 employees. One of the plants set for closing is the Precise tool-building operation in St. Petersburg, Fla., which will be consolidated with Courtesy’s large mold-making plant in Buffalo Grove, Ill.

Courtesy won Plastics News’ Processor of the Year Award in 1998, the year before its co-founders sold the company to Hicks Muse.

The integration of Precise Technology and Courtesy will be one of the plastics industry’s most interesting stories next year.



Tech Group Inc.

Founded in 1967, the Scottsdale, Ariz., injection molder is a well-known molder of health-care and consumer products and electronics. Many of its products are high-volume, disposable items, such as components for blood tests, inkjet printer cartridges for Hewlett-Packard Co. and two-shot molded ink pens with a soft grip.

Clean rooms and robots abound at Tech Group’s 12 plants in North America, Europe and Asia, which generated sales of $119 million in fiscal 2002.

Tech Group owners Steve Uhlmann and Hal Tashman are not afraid to sink significant money into the company, with a long-term vision.

For example, Tech Group has embraced the Six Sigma quality improvement program to a degree that sets it apart from most other molders. In just one year under Six Sigma, Tech Group now has 10 certified black belts and 16 green belts. A $377,000 investment has returned $1.1 million in savings. More employees are being trained now, including a candidate for master black belt.

Another significant investment promises to take Tech Group into a new age of fully automated, globally coordinated mold making through a project called the Super-Cell. Tech is setting up Super-Cell plants at its Scottsdale headquarters and at Omni Mold Ltd. in Singapore.

When full production begins in 2004 — after six years of development and more than $10 million — robots will load mold components through the various automated machining stations in exact duplicate plants on two continents.

Tech Group also is a leading proponent of using mold-cavity pressure to determine if a part is good or bad, even before the mold opens.

On the business operations side, Tech has gone through some changes, including a reversal in its strategy a few years ago. Beginning in the early 1980s, the company began diversifying into proprietary products as a hedge against volatile profit fluctuations in the custom molding business. Tech got into the packaging business of making PET bottles and closures.

Then in 1997, the owners handed over day-to-day operations to Charles Stroupe, who was named president and chief executive officer.

Tech proceeded into acquisition mode, venturing into proprietary medical products by purchasing two companies, American Precision Plastics and Vollrath Group.

Uhlmann, whose roots are in mold making, retired, but it didn’t last long.

In mid-2000, he returned to hands-on ownership, putting Stroupe in charge of the medical business that Stroupe and other managers later acquired from Tech and named Medegen Holdlings LLC.

The company sold the packaging operations.

Tech now has returned to its original core business: custom molding.

The conservative approach has helped Tech Group weather the economic storms now roiling the plastics industry, company officials said. On the other hand, Tech still can make a deal, as it has bought a Grand Rapids molding plant of Medtronic Inc.’s cardiac surgery business unit and picked up a majority stake in Detail Plastics Ltd. of Padiham, England.