By Michael Lauzon
CORRESPONDENT
Published: October 21, 2014 1:48 pm ET
Updated: October 21, 2014 1:51 pm ET
Profile extruder Omega Plastics LLC has expanded its stake in the market by acquiring Vinylex Corp.
Omega announced the deal Oct. 18 but did not disclose terms. Vinylex had been owned by two families who are no longer involved in the business.
“Vinylex complements us,” said Herb Hutchison, Omega vice president of sales and business development, in a phone interview. “It gives us more flexibility in where we can manufacture based on a customer’s location.”
Omega is based in Clinton, Tenn. With Vinylex it gets plants in Knoxville, Tenn., where Vinylex is headquartered, and in Carrollton, Texas.
Omega’s acquisition will also benefit the firm’s owner, DVP SA of Santiago, Chile. DVP bought Omega in 2012. DVP is a diverse producer and supplier of vinyl siding and other construction products.
“The addition of Vinylex talent, experience, resources and capabilities are essential to our long range growth plan in North America,” said CEO Ricardo Merino in a news release.
“The market in North America offers tremendous opportunity for our products, including extrusion and injection molding,” Merino elaborated. “We will continue aggressive growth organically with good people and products, as well as other potential acquisitions of plastics related processors.”
Omega said Vinylex and SVP will help it supply customers with multiple, global manufacturing operations.
Omega has just finished an expansion in Clinton that cost more than $8 million and boosted its number of extrusion lines from 12 to 18. An 85,000-square-foot addition doubled its floor space in Clinton.
Vinylex, like Omega, runs fully equipped tool shops, giving Omega more flexibility in manufacturing locations. Hutchison said Omega likely will keep open both Vinylex facilities but there will be some equipment relocation.
Omega is a diverse custom and proprietary extruder experienced in a range of commodity and engineering polymers, converting them into profiles and a small amount of tubing for construction, recreation, electrical, consumer and other markets. Vinylex is a custom and proprietary profile extruder that also supplies a range of markets with components made from general purpose and high-performance polymers.
Hutchison said the two firms’ customer lists overlap but Vinylex brings some new customers to Omega. Vinylex has been a leading custom extruder in the southeast United States since 1952 and pioneered profile extrusion in Tennessee.
Since SVP bought Omega, that company has boosted capacity by more than 50 percent with the addition of high-speed extrusion lines and an investment in people, including hiring extrusion veteran Hutchison.
“We continued to grow through the recession, and the merger of Omega Plastics with Vinylex Corp. will allow the company to continue expanding the market for profile extrusion in North America,” noted Omega CEO Stephen Redwine in a news release.
The acquisition gives Omega a combined footprint of more than 285,000 square feet in North America. Each site includes rail service, silo storage and compounding capacity. Hutchison said a bigger Omega can grow in South America as well aided by the SVP connection.
Omega, established in 1978, extrudes profiles and a proprietary, random-loop vinyl mesh sheet used for mats, product protection and other end-uses. It can extrude single, dual and triple durometer profiles. Its sales in 2013 were estimated at about $18 million, according to Plastics News’ survey of North American pipe, profile and tubing companies.
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