Until recently, he worked exclusively for Systematix, a company that custom-designed and built automation systems for manufacturers. In 2021, it was acquired by Samuel, Son & Co. a ‘leading metals and industrial products manufacturer, processor and distributor,’ in its own words. Founded in 1855 and based in Oakville, Ontario, it boasts a global presence. Samuel joined Systematix with CAID Automation and RAMP, two other automation and technology companies it owned, and the group was born.

Custom design work remains the norm at the new company. “Our customer always brings the process they want done and, typically, provides some form of user requirement specification. We call it a URS. Some customers leave it up to us to specify the hardware,” says Lague.

Samuel ASG’s automation systems are used for testing, inspecting, components assembly, packaging, and robotic handling. Solutions often contain camera systems or vision sensors as well as data collection tools. Automation solutions developed by the company are intended to increase productivity, streamline operations, and identify flawed parts. Some solutions also feature remote monitoring capability, so clients can scrutinize the performance of their systems.

Most of its work is self-performed although the company does buy equipment from outside companies, including robotics from FANUC, ABB, and other original equipment manufacturers.

Its main markets range from automotive and transportation to life sciences and consumer products. Within these categories are specific sub-markets; life sciences, for example, includes medical devices and pharmaceutical wares, while consumer products include window and door automation solutions.

As far as Lague is concerned, the creation of Samuel ASG has been a boon for everyone involved.

“Prior to being acquired by Samuel, Systematix had been in business for just over thirty years providing complex assembly solutions to a wide variety of customers. We had a very high percentage of repeat customers, and our customer base was relatively stable. Samuel gave us visibility to a larger customer base, and at the same time, the Samuel brand has created some additional exposure in the marketplace we didn’t have before,” he asserts.

Mutual assistance is one of the benefits of being under the Samuel, Son, and Co. umbrella. “We’ve begun working with the different Samuel companies, helping them find automation opportunities to improve their quality, production throughput, that sort of thing. So, we’ve done a number of smaller projects, and we’ve got one bigger line for a plant about an hour away from us here,” says Lague.

“We’ve capitalized on the companies’ ability to work with each other. For example, CAID Automation has engaged in design efforts for Systematix on a project where we needed extra resources. CAID has also helped on an installation in the U.S. for RAMP. They had people who were local they could send in and help with that install at the customer’s site.”

Sales teams for the three companies “now have a larger range of capabilities that they can sell to customers,” he adds.

Customers have also benefitted. Whereas in the past, a client might have had to work with several automation firms to complete a project, the entire assignment can now be handled by Samuel ASG depending on the skill sets involved.

While the individual companies within the group have become stronger, the company remains nimble and quick on its feet. “Across our business units, we have financial stability, processes, and expertise that is similar to the largest automation companies in the world, but we’re more agile and can provide lower cost solutions because we don’t have the overhead some of these really big companies have. We operate three independent companies that communicate well,” Lague states.

Samuel ASG has roughly two hundred employees. Experience is preferred in new hires, but it appreciates other traits as well. “Seasoned automation professionals are one of the things we’re always on the lookout for. We want self-starting, team-oriented individuals—people who like to problem solve and work with technology. Someone who likes to learn would fit very well into our organization because we’re constantly doing new stuff. We hire from both streams as far as college or university are concerned. We also have apprenticeship programs in different areas of our business. We can intake team members at all sorts of different areas,” he says.

In fitting with this innovative culture, it has a strong online presence, with profiles on social media platforms, but this is augmented by old-school promotion. The company regularly attends trade shows such as the upcoming Automate conference in Detroit this May.

In addition to innovation, Systematix and its sister companies have a reputation for doing quality work.

Systematix is ISO-certified and Samuel ASG has developed business best practices for “all areas: project management, shop floor, and design. These have been established and rolled out to each of the business units. As we grow and we add a new company, we compare our current standards with what the new company brings, and then we’ll try to make everything better. This has all been done in collaboration with the three businesses, and as we grow, we’re going to see if we can continue to improve our processes,” Lague explains.

When it comes to noteworthy projects, he mentions a jumbo-sized assignment involving an assembly line for truck transmissions. “The finished product was over seven thousand pounds when completed,” he notes, adding that the solution was shipped before the Christmas holidays.

As with every industry in North America, Samuel ASG had to cope with COVID. When the virus spread in early 2020, the company went into action. Desks were separated, and an employee temperature check-in system was established. The company tried to encourage remote work but discovered this model was not a good fit.

“Because a lot of our work is based on innovation, we like people being closer together so they can talk when they have ideas… We’re a workforce of problem-solvers. Our people are curious about team things. They thrive in the team environment that we need to complete our systems,” says Lague.

The company’s bottom line was not battered by COVID as some of the clients with which it works supply masks and testing devices so it was “actually very busy during COVID,” he recalls. Still, it has experienced virus-related supply chain woes.

“The stuff you’re hearing about all over is happening to us too. The chip shortage has caused us a lot of problems. The backlogs, because of the shutdowns in China that are affecting everybody’s supply chains and the components that we buy, that’s really affected our deliveries,” he says.

The company has been known to improvise in the face of supply chain delays. If commercial semiconductor chips are not available, a lift-locate unit might be fabricated in-house as a temporary stand-in for testing during the construction of a conveyor system.

Not counting COVID, Lague says hiring is the biggest challenge. “Finding talented people with a thirst for knowledge and experience in our field, it’s tough to do. We’re always looking. We’ve got postings on LinkedIn and Indeed. We attend college and university recruiting fairs. We host job fairs where we open up our facilities and invite candidates to come in and see what we do.”

In the future, growth, new services, and a continued emphasis on innovation are all on the agenda. The company has hired a new service manager to create “some new after-sales service offerings,” and is participating in pilot projects involving artificial intelligence (AI), says Lague. These projects were started by the parent company before the birth of the ASG.

“Now that we’re working with them, we’re going to do two or three test projects this year to actually put [AI] on equipment we build for Samuel and then be able to run it in-house so we can learn what it does, what its capabilities are, what the worth is to our customers, and ultimately, get out of that something we can offer to the marketplace,” he explains.

While each location within Samuel ASG is growing organically, the company is also keeping an eye out for “strategic acquisitions that can give us more of a technical capability and greater regional support throughout North America,” he continues.

Moving forward, “We are actively planning the Samuel ASG to have more business units in it and for these to be in regions mostly in the U.S. [That’s] where we’re looking to grow and to gain more technical know-how in the process,” Lague adds.

The post Stronger Together<p class="company">Samuel Automation Solutions Group</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Sadly, the biggest change “was my father passing away,” shares President Jake Bolton. Craig Bolton, who was interviewed for the previous profile, passed in the fall of 2021. Craig served as the company President. After his death, Jake, who had been Vice President, stepped into the top leadership spot while Jake’s younger brother, Lucas, and Plant manager, Patrick Park, have stepped up to help fill the void.

To honour Craig, the company has retained its focus on top-quality products and services, while upholding a loyal, experienced workforce. Peninsula continues to be a one-stop shop that offers a comprehensive range of services including consultation, modelling and industrial design, three-dimensional (3D) printing, part and mould design, manufacturing, packaging, warehousing, and shipping.

Consultations entail detailed discussions with clients and preliminary design work. Moulds can be custom designed according to customer specifications. Once a design has been chosen and successful prototypes have been built, the company will commence a production run of parts and moulds on its thirty-four custom injection machines and other processing equipment. This work is done in a 65,000-square-foot space at the company’s Fort Erie headquarters.

Across the street from the production center is Peninsula’s 30,000-square-foot warehouse for logistics work. The warehouse stocks customer products and inventory and this is where some light packaging is done. The company can provide display cases, blister and clamshell packages, and boxes, as well as perform heat sealing, labelling, and polyethylene bag packaging, to highlight and protect customers’ products. Logistics also covers brokerage duties and arranging pick-ups or deliveries for clients.

The company maintains a large inventory of a variety of plastic resins, which is very beneficial to its customers as they are able to pass on the savings of buying material in larger quantities. For commodity resins like polypropylene and polyethylene, there are four silos on-site which allow the company to purchase material in railcar quantities. Material in these silos can then be pumped directly to work centers without requiring a manual transfer of materials. This again provides added cost savings to customers. “We are looking at further improvements to this process by adding more silos and more advanced material conveying systems,” says Bolton.

Peninsula has a separate division called Nova Products that makes plastic goods such as glass case inserts, spools, and hydro components. Storage containers for recyclables are another Nova specialty; it makes ‘blue bins’ used to store paper and plastic recyclables and ‘green bins’ used to store kitchen and organic waste, primarily for municipalities. Blue bins include small, five-gallon units that can be fitted under desks, mid-sized stackable containers, and large twenty-two-gallon curbside bins. Green bins range from two-gallon kitchen containers to thirteen-gallon curbside units.

Nova has developed a brand new product: a thirty-two-gallon, black plastic garbage can, of which the company is particularly proud. “It’s light, compact, and made with superior materials, so it won’t break. It also has a “better aesthetic design,” than other garbage bins, according to Bolton.

The superior materials include impact-modified polypropylene. The garbage bin will be sold by retail outlets such as Home Depot, Home Hardware, and Walmart. The company is working on placing the thirty-two-gallon bin in Canadian Tire as well, he says.

In addition to its Fort Erie facilities, Peninsula uses a 20,000-square-foot, third-party warehouse in Buffalo, New York. This warehouse points to one of its strengths: the ability to ship products to both Canada and the U.S. with ease.

“It’s one of the things that sets us apart from other injection moulders. We’re literally on the border. The transfer of goods across the border is something we make extremely easy for our customers. We take the headache out of it,” Bolton states.

Other things also set the company apart. For a start, it maintains high standards of quality, with ISO and National Sanitation Foundation Institute (NSF) product certification. Based in Michigan, but with an international reach, the NSF offers product certification services in various fields including food equipment.

Peninsula has implemented Health Canada’s Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) program and Critical Control Points (HACCP) system. The GMP program is designed to ensure high standards for packaging material, among other things.

The company has a client-centred business ethos. Customers can approach Peninsula with a vague concept that the company turns into a production-ready product. This process is driven by the use of 3D, computer-aided design software. It sometimes taps into the same skillset to fix problem moulds from other firms.

Peninsula uses 3D printers as well, but only for prototyping. Despite the hype about 3D printing, the process is still too slow and unwieldy to mass produce moulds or parts, says Bolton. “It’s not going replace injection moulding in this century. It doesn’t compare to the strength of injection moulding or the speed of injection moulding,” he points out.

Given this, Peninsula is eager to buy more custom injection machines, preferably bigger ones. At present, the largest machine the company owns has a clamping force of 1800 tons. Within a couple of years, it hopes to add a 2,500-ton machine to its lineup. “We’re looking to increase our tonnage. We’re looking for a bigger machine,” says Bolton.

For all the progress Peninsula is making, the company is still somewhat in recovery following COVID. “2021 was a tornado of a year, but things have been returning back to normal,” Bolton reports.

Certain health protocols remain in place; visitors are still required to sign in, and staff members, in general, are much more vigilant about the prospect of illness. Now that the virus appears to be finally receding, the company has taken to attending in-person trade shows again while continuing to enhance its online presence.

Prior to the pandemic, Peninsula employed 130 workers around the clock. This has been reduced to ninety employees working continuously for five days a week. Bolton hopes that the workforce has been only temporarily downsized.

Meanwhile, the company is striving to streamline its operations to increase efficiency. A few years ago, it acquired an enterprise resource planning software system for its offices. The system has proven its worth and the company is now “working on implementing bar code scanning and the Internet of Things into the workplace,” reports Bolton.

Peninsula’s human resources department has added new software as well, to track vacation time and other employee data. The software will eventually include online employee portals to help employees access their information faster and easier. The firm uses a fingerprint clock check-in for staff and is looking to expand its machine monitoring capabilities to keep an eye on cycles and production time.

In addition to software, the company has introduced robotic systems on its plant floor. Robots enhance both productivity and worker safety by taking on potentially dangerous tasks once performed by employees such as reaching into machines to remove parts.

For all the technological software and robotic solutions, Peninsula is fully aware of the importance of human relationships. The company builds employee loyalty. Staff members are eligible for a variety of benefits, including dental coverage and a registered savings program. Peninsula emphasizes internal promotions and likes to match experienced staff with new hires for intensive, hands-on training.

It tries to encourage a family-like work culture, which makes sense given its heritage. The company originated as a small custom injection moulding shop with a handful of machines and employees in Georgetown, Ontario. It was purchased by Jake Bolton’s grandfather in 1976 and moved to Fort Erie. Fred changed the name to Peninsula Plastics and expanded the operation. Craig took over in 1989, and now his two sons are heading the business.

Going forward, the plan is to keep Peninsula within the family and expand operations through moulding larger products. There is also talk about entering new product categories such as the home organization market. “We’re working on that now,” says Bolton.

There have also been discussions about setting up new branches in different cities. “Especially with shipping costs, we could definitely see ourselves branching out—trying to cover more of North America,” he says.

The post New Products, New Ownership for This Family Firm<p class="company">Peninsula Plastics </p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

“As of now, we have a total rental fleet of just over 275,000 horsepower, and out of that total, we are 98.5 percent electric-driven. We still have a miniscule percentage of legacy compression units that are driven by combustion engines, but we are getting closer and closer to the one hundred percent figure,” states Chief Executive Officer Brian Green, son of the company founder.

TOPS also offers comprehensive service, support, and maintenance for the roughly nine hundred advanced compressors in its fleet. Its customers consist of energy companies in the Permian Basin—a region in the south-western U.S. with abundant oil and gas deposits.

Gas compression—which increases the pressure of natural gas by reducing its volume—is not a new technology. TOPS, however, has established itself at the forefront of the compression field. Instead of driving the compressor with a traditional gas combustion engine, its compression skids have two electric-powered motors for nearly emissions-free operation.

Compressors from the company also feature custom-designed supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) technology. A SCADA system uses sensors, software, programmable logic controllers (PLCs), and other devices to enable process automation, data collection, and remote performance monitoring.

This type of innovation helps it stand out. “I think the biggest piece for us is automation—what we are able to do control-wise with an electric motor and a PLC. It’s far more advanced than what can be done with a gas engine. Everything is simpler—from restarts to monitoring operational ability,” says Green. “Secondly, there is the amount of data and analytics we’re able to collect from this system. Pretty much everything on that skid we can track in real time,” he shares.

“We have roughly 125 data points that we’re capturing in real time from each of our compressor skids. All that data is being funneled through our control room. It’s being looked at with statistical models to see if temperatures, vibration, pressures, or anything is out of norm or out of standard deviation.”

If a mishap is detected, or if a unit is down, TOPS can dispatch technicians to investigate and fix the problem or even restart the system remotely.

In addition to being highly efficient, the company’s compressors are better for the environment. Gas compressors typically run continuously, every day of the year, so traditional systems create a lot of carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and other toxic fumes. Removing a gas combustion engine from the equation “is a significant benefit, not just for our industry but for our customers and everyone, from an ESG (environmental, social, governance) perspective,” says Green. TOPS compressors are also less noisy and costly and offer greater run-time than their gas-powered counterparts.

From its Midland headquarters, TOPS maintains a satellite office in Carlsbad, New Mexico and a facility in Yukon, Oklahoma. The Carlsbad branch primarily supports field personnel in the region, while the Yukon facility “gets our units ready and does major overhauls and such,” Green explains.

Equipment handled in Yukon is intended for use elsewhere. “Our operating area is all within the Permian Basin. Every one of our compression units is located in West Texas or southern New Mexico,” he says. Business is booming at present, so there is no need to expand outside of the Permian Basin.

TOPS has “a tremendous backlog for equipment that’s already contracted out to a blue chip customer base. So, right now, we are as busy as we can be servicing needs in the Permian. It would have to be a pretty good opportunity for us to move outside because we’re doing really well here,” he states.

The company gets most of its gas compressor units from Ariel, an Ohio-based firm that describes itself as ‘the largest manufacturer of separable reciprocating gas compressors worldwide.’ Green explains that there are “only a handful of manufacturers of natural gas compressors. The gold standard in the compression industry is Ariel. So, roughly eighty percent of our fleet is Ariel gas compressors.”

Ariel will build a compressor frame with cylinders and other equipment. Then, the product is sent to a network of Ariel packagers who work with TOPS “on the design of the overall compressor skid and compressor package, adding the cooler, motors, piping, pressure vessels, et cetera,” says Green.

Once the packagers’ work is done, the compressor goes to TOPS which installs instrumentation and other technology, then adds the finished product to its fleet.

Brian Green’s father L.D. Green founded the firm in 1996. When Brian came on board in 2006, the focus was on traditional, natural-gas-driven compressors which were “the industry standard,” in that period, he remembers. It has “definitely been an evolution.”

By 2008, shale gas had become a much sought-after commodity in the Permian Basin. “We were getting involved in the gas-lift compression market around that time. We began to see a lot of problems popping up with traditional compression units with natural gas engines. They weren’t really designed to run well in the Permian Basin. They weren’t really designed to handle the wet, saturated, heavy-gravity gas that we see up here,” recalls Green.

Around 2011, TOPS began delving into electric-driven compression as an alternative. “At the time we had all the naysayers who were saying, ‘Electric doesn’t make any sense.’ Fast forward, and we’ve completely flipped that metric,” says Green. “We’re doing business with the who’s who—blue chip customers in the Permian Basin—so I think we’ve proven that the concept for our area makes a lot of sense.”

L.D. Green worked as president and chief executive officer of TOPS until recently. In January of this year, he decided “to enjoy a much earned retirement, but he’s still involved with the company as chairman of the board,” his son states.

Brian Green, who has handled just about every facet of the business, moved from chief operating officer to chief executive officer. The company is now partnered with private equity group, Apollo Global Management, Inc. and is no longer a family business.

One consistent theme throughout the years has been a commitment to customer service. As business expanded, the company invested in new compressors and staff. “As we grow our fleet size, you have to have enough technicians to keep up. You have to have additional engineering support, project management support, all the back office support to make sure those guys in the field have the parts they need when they need them and where they need them,” explains Vice President of Sales and Marketing Misty Ingle.

TOPS currently has 165 employees. When considering a new employee, particularly for work in the field, the company wants people “who are technically inclined, who are not afraid to learn new things, who can embrace working with electronics and automation. It’s not something they’re intimidated by,” says Green.

A strong work ethic and the ability to take on challenges and “wear several different hats,” is also important, he continues.

“We love an employee who will challenge our preconceived notions. A lot of companies will squash that in their employees but we welcome somebody to challenge us and help us grow and do things differently,” adds Ingle.

For all its upward momentum, the company faces many challenges, including COVID. When the virus began spreading rapidly in March 2020, it introduced controls on people entering and leaving its facility, temperature checks, and social distancing to keep its workforce safe.

The pandemic “was an incredibly tough time for our industry,” but TOPS got through the worst of it intact and grew during the crisis, says Green. “I think it is a testament to what we’re doing and the benefits our customers see with our products.”

While the virus might have peaked, the fallout from shutdowns continues to wreak havoc on supply chains. Like many companies, TOPS has been dealing with long delays in part shipments, especially electronic components from Asia.

Still, the forecast for the future is bright. When interviewed, the company was preparing to ship a 2,000 horsepower compressor—its biggest unit yet. This fully electric system is quite a leap for the firm, which previously only handled compressors that went up to 800 horsepower.

“We see this as an opportunity for us to continue to grow, to put out some larger compressors. The same things that made us so successful with the smaller compressors, we think are going to be game changers for the larger units,” says Green.

Five years down the road, “We want to be seen as the leader of not just electric compression but the leader in compression in general. We’re constantly adapting and innovating. We want to see our horsepower totals continue to grow. We want to continue to grow our team and take advantages of opportunities as they come up.”

The post This Texas Company Expands its Gas Compression Business<p class="company">Total Operations & Production Services (TOPS)</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.

Because he came from a high-performance background, Howlett was able to immediately recognize the gap in the market. “All the materials that I could see were largely general-purpose,” he remembers. “There was nothing really interesting out there from a materials aspect. So I started 3DXTECH with the entire purpose of introducing higher-performance materials to the market than were currently available.”

The company quickly earned an enviable reputation for its use of high-temperature polymers and carbon fiber. “3DXTECH is known for high-performance materials and cutting-edge technology,” Howlett says, and the team works hard to remain at the leading edge of the industry, consistently coming out “with something new and different,” to meet the ever-evolving needs of a market hungry for next-level solutions.

“We started creating a lot of really interesting materials to be printed,” he remembers. The effort paid off almost immediately. “Before I knew it, we were regularly selling to companies like SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems—across the board, you name it.” Even NASA was interested. “Nobody was really fulfilling the need in the market for high-performance materials.”

Supplying this high-performance material turned out to be just the first step. “That inevitably led to the question of ‘Which printer do you recommend for this material?’ And we would recommend printer X or printer Y just because it had decent capabilities, but it really wasn’t ideal for our type of high-performance materials.”

This need drove the company to take the next step in its journey of firsts. “In 2018, we decided to create our own printer because we really needed an answer to that question, ‘Which printer do you recommend for these high-performance materials?’”

3DXTECH started by hiring a team of several dozen engineers. They got to work and developed the Gearbox™ HT2 3D printer, which launched at the end of 2021. “The first customers were, no surprise, aerospace clients who had been pushing us for years to make this machine. We finally had the answer to the question of, ‘Which printer do you recommend for your high-performance materials?’ That’s really the crux of why we did this.”

This journey has been unique within the industry. “We’re the first materials company that invested in a 3D printer to integrate the materials into the printer,” Howlett says. “Typically, what happens is a company will make a printer and then try to find materials that work well in it, whereas, we started from the opposite perspective, a materials-first perspective.”

“We have a materials-first strategy, and we’ll build the materials that the customers need and that the printer will then be able to handle, as opposed to the other way around. It’s kind of a solution looking for a problem if you don’t do it that way. I really can’t think of another printer company that we compete with that was a materials company first and then created a printer to fill in the gaps.”

The company’s products continue to be a hit, attracting everyone from “consumers running low-cost machines, all the way through to NASA and Lockheed Martin.” The aerospace industry has been particularly interested because the industry demands “high-performance materials and needs a printer that is really ideally suited for high-performance materials.” 3DXTECH has also done very well with the energy industry because “this printer can print materials that are ideally situated for oil and gas applications.”

3DXTECH has a democracy-only sourcing policy with 90 percent of the printer coming from U.S.-based suppliers and the remaining from those in Germany, Taiwan, and Japan. Howlett explains that, “We could likely source parts much less expensively in non-democratic countries, but that’s not who we are and not what we want to support—and our aerospace / defense customers are always pushing for U.S.-sourced and U.S.-made.”

The printers themselves are made in the U.S.A, almost exclusively within the company’s home base of Michigan. “Eighty percent of the printer is made within one hundred miles of Grand Rapids,” Howlett reports.

“Our team members pride themselves on delivering difficult orders. A big company will get a hold of us and say, ‘We need something special,’ and so we do it. We make special materials for many of these [customers]. Many of these specialty materials have even made it into space.”

For example, one high profile customer “needed tungsten-filled PEKK (a thermoplastic also known as polyetherketoneketone) for an application that’s going into space that had a very specific neutron shielding capability, and they went to many of the big-name players—legacy companies in the business—and they all told them no, and we made the material for them in two months.”

This quality is made possible by a team of experts who have worked in the field for decades. “We have engineers on staff that have anywhere from twenty to forty years of experience in the industry,” Howlett says. “So we have quite a depth of materials engineering know-how.”

The company culture encourages collaboration and communication, ensuring that employees all work together for the best outcome. “Everyone feels like they are on the team, and they understand what the goals are and that they are all working toward them,” Howlett says. “I’ve never been surrounded by such a great team of engineers and salespeople and front office. This is the best team that I’ve ever worked with in my thirty years.”

The team is specially trained to ensure they can deliver the support customers need, and if they do not know the solution, they will bring in someone who can help. “Each one of our salespeople, each one of our tech service people, each one of our customer service people is trained to be able to answer technical questions and then bring that issue up the chain if they don’t have the knowledge to be able to answer it.”

This training is important due to the complexity of the subject matter. Customers “have a lot of questions that we need to be able to provide a lot of answers for,” as subject matter experts, Howlett says. “We can help disseminate that information in an effective way to them so that they can be successful in what they’re trying to do.”

The journey that humbly began in Matt Howlett’s basement has quickly progressed. Teaming up with Howlett’s long-time colleague in the plastics industry, Gary Foote, the company already owns its building in Grand Rapids, Michigan, occupying the structure’s entire 68,000 square feet. “We’ve been growing at about a fifty percent-plus growth rate year-over-year, and we’re in the multi-millions,” he says.

In October 2021, while retaining his role as president and CEO, Howlett and his business partner Gary Foote sold 3DXTECH to Chicago-based private equity firm CORE Industrial Partners, which focuses on 4^th generation manufacturers. “We took the company as far as we could on our own and needed a partner who could help us grow the business to the next level. CORE has significant investments in other additive manufacturing companies and their experience and resources were an ideal fit for us.”

Since closing, the benefits of working with CORE have been very clear. “That’s really given us the ability to grow beyond what we could have done on our own. We have access to expertise and capital that have significantly propelled our growth just in the short time we’ve been with CORE… We have access to capital but also access to their partner companies to increase our vendor base.”

But that is not all. “They want to grow our business with acquisitions,” Howlett adds. “So with CORE’s assistance, we’ve been evaluating multiple companies both here in the U.S. and abroad to add them to our portfolio.”

Armed with leading-edge high-performance materials, a specially designed printer, and the support of a private equity firm, 3DTECH is all set to continue blazing a trail through the 3D printing industry.

The post High Performance<p class="company">3DXTECH</p> appeared first on Business In Focus Magazine.