May 10th, 2019

https://www.msnbc.com/stephanie-ruhle/watch/garrett-haake-reports-on-how-tariffs-have-driven-up-the-cost-of-washing-machines-and-dryers-59384901661

January 8, 2019

Plastic News By AUDREY LAFOREST

Injection molder Revere Plastics Systems LLC is following through on plans to diversify into the automotive market with a move to metro Detroit and a recent acquisition.

Revere, previously headquartered at its manufacturing facility in Clyde, Ohio, moved into a roughly 2,000-square-foot leased office space in Novi, Mich., in April.

CEO Glen Fish cited proximity to the automotive industry and the ability to tap into the local talent pool as two big reasons for the move to Michigan. Approximately five executives work out of the Novi office.

In addition to the new headquarters, Revere announced Jan. 4 it had acquired certain operations and assets of Tier 1 automotive supplier Sur-Flo Plastics & Engineering Inc.’s Fraser, Mich., facility. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Revere has hired the 114,500-square-foot facility’s 111 employees. Going forward, Sur-Flo will not remain a company, Fish said during a Jan. 7 phone interview with Plastics News.

Livonia, Mich.-based Vari-Form Group, formerly known as Crowne Group, was the parent company of Sur-Flo.

Sur-Flo manufactured large-tonnage injection molded parts and assemblies primarily for the automotive industry, including fascia brackets, radiator and front grille support systems and molded-in-color interior components, among other parts. Customers included automakers such as Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV.

“[Sur-Flo] had a very good track record operationally. It was obviously very strategic to our diversification efforts that we’ve been working on,” Fish said. But Sur-Flo “had gone through some challenges,” he explained, including a reduction in volume as programs shifted and rolled off.

“As they went through their rough period again … they had not put any salesforce out in the market, so we’re pretty excited to go and help sell that capacity back because they had done probably 25 percent more volume through that facility in the past,” Fish said.

Revere predominantly supplies plastic components for the appliance industry, serving customers such as Whirlpool Corp. The company has been steadily trying to grow the automotive portion of the business, however, doing so mostly organically up to this point.

“But this obviously gives us a big jumpstart with customers that we didn’t previously do business with,” Fish said, adding that the acquisition represents Revere’s “first foray into being a Tier 1 supplier.”

Through the deal, Revere acquired 35 injection molding machines, ranging from 45 tons to a whopping 3,300 tons, as well as other equipment for secondary operations such as post-mold assembly and vibration welding.

The additional injection molding machines bring Revere’s companywide total to about 265, Fish said, with clamping forces starting at 25 tons.

“Our previous top end was 1,880 tons, and so we do very well in the large-tonnage capacity in general as a company,” he said of the addition of a 3,300-ton press. “Being able to increase that range is pretty strategic for ourselves as well as to open some existing capacity in those ranges where we’ve had to buy presses in the past.”

Revere, owned by French private equity firm Ardian, has four additional plants including Clyde, Ohio; Jeffersonville, Ind.; Poplar Bluff, Mo.; and Brampton, Ontario. The company also has a sales office in St. Joseph, Mich.

Annual sales for Revere, which employs around 1,150 people, are estimated at $250 million, Fish said. In PN’s most recent ranking of North American injection molders, the company comes in at No. 42.

“Our strategy is to continue to grow,” he said, adding that the company is “very, very inquisitive and active in the mergers and acquisition space.”

Outside of automotive and appliance, Fish said the company is evaluating at least a half dozen end markets for potential growth.

“Many of these end markets we can serve out of existing facilities, so we’re looking at how to penetrate an end market that has some cross-selling opportunities with other divisions,” he said.

https://www.plasticsnews.com/article/20190108/NEWS/190109912/revere-plastics-growing-in-automotive-market-with-move-acquisition

Plastics News
By: Catherine Kavanaugh
June 28, 2018

RGS Energy has seen such strong demand for the Powerhouse solar shingle that it has inked a deal with a second injection molding partner to meet demand for the shingle system, which combines solar power collecting with a roof shingle.

RGS, which says it is seeing more than $570,000 worth of reservations for Powerhouse every day, has signed Clyde, Ohio-based Revere Plastic Systems LLC as a second molder.

Revere, with more than 230 presses, will join Creative Liquid Coatings Inc. in Kendallville, Ind., as part of the supply chain producing the in-roof solar shingles.

Developed by Midland, Mich.-based Dow Chemical Co. and licensed to Denver-based Real Goods Solar Inc., which does business as RGS Energy, the Powerhouse system has been hailed as a breakthrough because it serves as both a building product that can be used to replace asphalt roofs and a source of electricity. Installed flush to the roof, the product also is more visually appealing than panels on mounts tilted toward the sun.

RGS says the potential market for the updated Powerhouse system is 7 million homes a year in the United States. If it can capture 1 percent of that market through sales to roofers and homebuilders, sales could reach $1 billion.

RGS Energy Revere Plastic Systems LLC is the second injection molder to join in the partnership to produce Powerhouse shingles.
Revere agreed to dedicate resources to support up to $138 million in estimated Powerhouse sales after seeing the solar shingles and its “huge market potential,” according to CEO Glen Fish.

“We believe our financial strength and reputation will enhance the Powerhouse supply chain,” Fish said. “Beyond that, we believe as the Powerhouse line evolves, our design and engineering expertise will prove to be valuable at reducing cost and enhancing product features.”

In business for more than 50 years, Revere has 750 employees serving customers that include Whirlpool, GE, Briggs & Stratton, Tyco and Dura Automotive Systems. The company has production facilities in Clyde, Jeffersonville, Ind.; Poplar Bluff, Mo.; and Brampton, Ontario.

RGS now has four partners ramping up to produce the third generation of the solar shingle series, which will be called RGS Powerhouse 3.0. In addition to the two injection molders, General Polymers Thermoplastic Materials LLC of Clarkston, Mich., will provide the polypropylene for the composite base structure and Ningbo, China-based Risen Energy Co. Ltd. will supply the solar components and wire harness connectors.

Customer reservations currently exceed $36 million, according to RGS CEO Dennis Lacey.

“To meet growing demand, we required an additional plastic molding manufacturer,” Lacey said in the release. “As we work towards UL [Underwriters Laboratories] certification in September, our supply chain partners are taking the necessary steps to be able to quickly manufacture Powerhouse.”

RGS received UL approval for the base resin in April and is seeking to certify the entire system, which is made up of a base assembly, electrical connector and solar laminate.

Dow holds numerous patents for the Powerhouse technology, licensing them to RGS for $3 million plus quarterly royalties of 2.5 percent of the net sale price.

Lacey expects 2018 to be a transformative year for RGS with quarterly operating profit “to turn positive” in 2019. He described the market opportunity for Powerhouse as tremendous and pointed to the solar mandate that passed in May in California requiring all new homes, condos and apartment buildings to be equipped with solar power starting in 2020. California is the first to adopt a state-wide mandate.

RGS plans to sell the Powerhouse 3.0 system in California through direct sales to builders and roofing companies that have been trained to install the product and become Powerhouse dealers. The company appointed former Dow Solar field technician John Hardwick as vice president of construction services. He previously oversaw sales in that state and Texas as well as training for roofing and builder partners in those two states, Colorado, North Carolina, New York, New Jersey and Hawaii.

RGS Energy also has been selected by Solarize Brookfield, a solar purchasing cooperative, to bring solar electricity to about 6,000 homes and businesses in Brookfield, Conn. The sign-up period continues through Sept. 25.

In October, Solarize North Haven, which is also in Connecticut, went with RGS Energy to deliver solar power to its 8,600 households. This state’s program, Solarize Connecticut, has helped residential solar installations grow from fewer than 900 in 2012 to more than 22,000 today.

– Plastics News, June 18, 2018

Revere Plastics Systems LLC focuses on doing more for its customers, going beyond molding and shipping parts to adding value that sets the company apart from its competition. According to Doug Drummond, vice president of sales and marketing, the core competency for Revere, which recently moved its headquarters to Novi, Mich., is injection molding and assembly. The company’s engineering and technical resources set it apart.

“We are not one of the standard molders that just molds a part and puts it in the box and ships it,” Drummond said. “We can do that, but about 85 percent of the company’s business features some sort of value-add.”

Additional core competencies include engineering, stack molding, tandem molding, insert molding, multi-shot molding, mold-to-mold transfer, in-mold decorating and vertical molding. Another way that Revere sets itself apart from the competition is with its top-flight technical resources and capabilities that add value for customers.

“We have more than 40 engineers on staff,” Drummond explained. “As we build up relationships with our customers, we try to dial in on that. The customers value all that we can bring to the table.” While some customers may just want a molded solution, others may be looking for a vendor that can provide a part that features multiple molded parts and several components that are then assembled and shipped. Complexity is no problem. In fact, this is where Revere excels.

Revere performs a lot of the final assembly and design work in-house, which is another value-add for its customers. During a tour through a Revere facility, a customer will witness an elevated level of the latest automation technology. Drummond also noted that the company has a dedicated sales engineering group.

“Their primary focus is to be externally tuned into what we can do for the customer,” he said. “It goes beyond maximizing efficiencies.” This includes a formal program in which the company details a plan that is geared for each customer. “Many customers are looking for a price reduction,” Drummond noted. “The easy way would be to reduce the PO price. That is easy to change, but in the end, taking cost out is the best way to reduce price.”

The sales engineering group works to develop innovative technologies that can be shown to customers. “It may not be applicable every time, but just showing customers that you are working on new things and have new ideas flowing is a positive,” Drummond pointed out.

Revere is very proficient at handling high-volume customers with complex products. Drummond noted that the key to be a valued supplier in these relationships is communication. “It goes beyond a sales person talking to a buyer,” he said. “Once your engineering group gets heavily involved with their engineering group, and your quality group gets heavily involved with their quality group, it forges the relationships and they gain trust in giving you that kind of business.”

“Revere is very proficient at handling high-volume customers with complex products. Drummond noted that the key to be a valued supplier in these relationships is communication.”

The company also is adept at being flexible. Drummond noted that many customers also have multiple locations and the company can move equipment and processes across locations to where it is needed by customers. One example is a project in which Revere is making fuel tanks for a very large manufacturer.

“We have done this work for them for a long time in our Poplar Bluff, Mo., facility. We had an opportunity to supply them tanks at another one of their facilities near our Jeffersonville, Ind., plant,” he said. “There was some apprehension by the customers, but we showed them that we had the ability to transfer that capability.” Companywide, Revere has more than 230 injection molding presses ranging from 25 tons to 1,880 tons.

“We have a lot of welding capabilities,” Drummond pointed out. The company also has been instrumental in working with customers to develop parts that previously had been made from metal. Revere currently is working on a project with an auto OEM to mold a brake component that has historically been made of metal.

“They needed to take weight out of the assembly,” he said. “We started working with the original metal part design. They got us involved very early in the process.”

Revere worked through a couple of versions of the part. “That led to some additional enhancements, which turned into prototype tooling,” Drummond noted. “It has been a terrific opportunity for us in the automotive industry. It is one of the opportunities that we really look for.”

By providing solutions for its customers, Revere is ensuring that 2018 will be a great year for the company and Drummond noted that “this year is looking pretty good for us.” Drummond concluded that bringing more value to its customers will be a central focus for Revere during the coming year.

A famous ad jingle claimed that “Good things grow in Ontario,” and Revere Plastics Systems LLC is hoping to grow its business at its manufacturing plant in the Southern Ontario city of Brampton.

Known primarily for making products for the appliance sector, the Clyde, Ohio-based injection molder is in the midst of a major push into other end markets as part of an ambitious strategy to double its revenue over the next four years. The diversification plan – which also includes investing in more large-tonnage injection molding, automation and other technology – has already been enacted at Revere Plastics’ three plants in the U.S., and the Brampton facility is next in line.

HOLDING PATTERN

Revere Plastics should probably be better known than it is. With estimated sales of US$215 million, Revere Plastics has four plants — in Clyde; Poplar Bluff, Mo.; Jeffersonville, Ind.; and Brampton – and 275 presses, ranging from 25 to 1,880 tons. Adept in a wide variety of molding processes – including stack, two-shot, and overmolding, as well as a long list of secondary operations – the firm employs about 1,000 workers in total, and has customers in appliances, automotive, housewares, outdoor power equipment, medical, and electronics. “We’ve always been a major player in injection molding, particularly in appliances – our plant in Clyde is just down the street from a major Whirlpool plant, for example,” said Doug Drummond, Revere Plastics’ director of business development and marketing. “Whirlpool and General Electric are our biggest appliance customers, and we also have big customers in the outdoor power equipment sector.”

But as sometimes happens, the firm got into a rut over time. Founded in 2005 as the plastics division of Revere Industries LLC, an Indianapolis-based company that also had metal operations, Revere Plastics was taken over in 2009 by Santa Monica, Calif.-based investment firm Tennenbaum Capital Partners LLC. “Sales remained consistent under the new owner, but the company lacked unity and an overall focus, and the four plants operated almost independently of each other,” Drummond said. “We definitely weren’t maximizing our synergies.” And it didn’t help that the appliance market was changing rapidly. “For years now, offshore companies like Samsung and LG have been taking a bigger and bigger share of the North American market,” Drummond said.

RISE UP

In 2013, Tennenbaum Capital finally started to make changes, including fresh capital investment and the push to diversify the customer base. “Our plant in Jeffersonville, in particular, had too much open capacity and required serious attention, and that was the new management’s focus for the first three years; I was recruited from an automotive supplier company during this time to help oversee that process,” Drummond said. ”The Brampton plant was profitable and it had a few key customers that it kept happy, but it was basically in a holding pattern from a business development perspective until we turned our attention to it last year.”

In one of Revere Plastics’ main initiatives for 2017, the 60,000-square-foot Brampton plant has been targeted for aggressive business growth and an internal overhaul. A first step was to bring in a new general manager, Gus Shaar. “We also hired a new salesman with the specific goal of growing the sales in the Southern Ontario region,” Drummond said.

One of Shaar’s first jobs, in turn, was to implement a lean manufacturing program, beginning with a redesign of the Brampton plant’s shop floor. “We began by cleaning up the aisles; empty skids used to be all over the floor, and we’ve now stacked them neatly in designated areas,” Shaar said. “We also painted coloured lines and symbols on the floors to indicate aisles, work areas, and storage areas: blue lines indicate raw material storage, white is where the employees work, yellow designates safe areas where forklifts cannot cross, and green indicates areas for finished goods. It’s all part of implementing a strict lean manufacturing process that allows us to work faster and smarter, not harder, and we’ve improved our productivity by six per cent as a result.”

The look of the shop floor has changed in other ways, too. “We have purchased several new injection molding machines in the last 12 months, giving us a total of 42 presses in Brampton, with 600 as our largest tonnage,” Drummond said. “We have the ability to produce not just a plastic part, but a complete assembly, which is why over 80 per cent of our overall sales as a company has to do with adding value to a product, for example through welding – we can do six different types of welding – or decorating,” Drummond said. “This is the kind of new business we want, as opposed to simply molding a part. If we can grow the amount of complex, value-added products we manufacture, our sales in Brampton will increase while bringing more value to our customers at the same time.”

REACHING OUT

The company’s plan to double its revenue over the next four years is as carefully crafted as its shop floor makeover. “The three major industries that we are focussing on are automotive, appliance, and outdoor power equipment,” Drummond said. “We’ve done our research and know who to call on in Southern Ontario to build new relationships; and we’ve also joined industry associations such as the Automotive Parts Makers’ Association and the Outdoor Power Equipment Institute, which will help to raise our profile and put us in touch with an even wider range of potential new customers.”

The message that Revere Plastics is trying to put out, Drummond continued, is that the company’s technologies help separate it from its competitors. “We have more to offer than just a price for a part – we can supply a complete assembly,” he said. “We have expertise in design optimization, tooling, screw types, and automation. In addition, we have low overhead, meaning we can provide cost advantages for our customers. And we’re very good at problem solving.”

Another strength, Drummond added, is that the Brampton plant can tap into resources from Revere Plastics’ three U.S. facilities. “Revere Plastics has over 30 engineers across its plants in Clyde, Poplar Bluff, and Jeffersonville, and their expertise is available to us,” he said. “We can even move equipment from the other plants if necessary. We have complete buy-in from management: If we find the right customers and the right opportunities, the company will back us up all the way.”

The results of the company’s push into new markets are already beginning to show. “We implemented the growth strategy in Brampton one year ago, and we are already seeing a rise in RFQ packages from customers, and are getting more and more customers that want to tour our facility,” Drummond said. “These are the things that lead to more sales.”

Perhaps the only fly in the ointment is that, like many plastics processors that are in expansion mode, Revere Plastics’ Brampton plant is faced with challenges when it comes to hiring new workers. “We’ve automated wherever possible to make our workers’ jobs easier, and to free them to do more cognitive work,” Gus Shaar said. “But there are some jobs we can’t automate: we’re always on the lookout for new set-up workers, for example, and are in touch with local universities and technical colleges to find students that we can bring into our team and provide additional training for. We invest a lot of money in training”

In the end, there are worse problems to have than needing new workers to keep up with new business. “Revere Plastics has been around for awhile, but we’re not the same company we were a few years ago,” Drummond said. “We have an ambitious growth plan and the resources to achieve it.”

It’s one more good thing that’s growing in Ontario.

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