tom,
I drove over to the Comptec plant in Surrey on Sunday. It was not operating, so they must not be going full bore, 7-day, 3-shifts right now. The facility was well maintained and 'looked prosperous'!!
I come from a 'plastics' family, after a fashion, as my dad worked over 20 years and my brother now has over 35 years at a large plastics plant in Michigan (originally the private Haas Corp, now part of Lear Corp; the Comptec plant would have fit into their paint shop alone). As a kid, I used to go over sometimes on Sunday nights with my dad when he did plant safety inspections. I intend to speak to my brother about the PVC extrusion process, and get his opinion. The plant is large, and mostly geared toward injection molding, with large reliance on the auto industry particularly in dashboard and seat assemblies, with lesser dependence upon large appliances, military goods, etc. I do not believe that they do any PVC extrusion work. In the old days, they mostly made knobs and such, but for some years have specialized in complete modular component assemblies. One thing I learned last time I visited a couple of years back was that quality control and automated tolerance inspection was a major key to getting and maintaining contracts. Emphasis on this point is one reason why the plant that my family worked at has never closed or had to scale back significantly even during recessions.
Most of the plastics industry as I understand it is a large volume, low margin, highly competitive business, and as such does not usually fall into the category of high growth potential. The Comptec CEO repeatedly mentioned that the company wanted to, and apparently already does, occupy a more profitable niche market. My impression was that it is due to the manufacture of equipment and plant setup rather than pure reliance on parts production. I will need to learn much more about the potential for that niche before diving in.
Anyone have any comments??
Good Trading,
Jim Lang |
