The husband-and-wife owners of Accurate Molded Plastics Inc., a plastic parts maker based in Coeur d’Alene, have bought competitor Mold-Rite Inc., of Woodinville, Wash., for an undisclosed sum.

Together, the two companies employ 230 people, including about 130 in Coeur d’Alene and 100 at the West Side plant. Dale Meyer, CEO of the combined companies, says both facilities are looking to hire more employees.

Meyer says he and his wife, Janeanne Upp, a CPA who now is chief financial officer for both companies, purchased Mold-Rite through a parent company they formed under the name Sound Rite Plastics Ltd. 

“Technically, Sound Rite owns each of those entities. We will continue to do business as Mold-Rite and AMP, at least for the foreseeable future,” Meyer says.

He says he’s enthused about the acquisition and the benefits it will bring to both operations.

“It gives us greater diversity of markets and customers. It gives us greater economies of scale, and it broadens our technology base for both companies as we cross-train in skill sets that are unique to each company,” he says.

Accurate Molded Plastics was founded about 30 years ago, and Meyer and Upp bought it in 2003. It specializes in short-run, highly technical injection molding projects for the medical, aerospace, electronics, and fitness industries. It occupies a little over 60,000 square feet of space in four buildings it owns on a 5-acre site at 3474 S. Industrial Loop in the Coeur d’Alene Business Park.

Mold-Rite, which had been owned by Gary and Karin Hilse and was founded in 1978, also serves the medical, aerospace, and fitness industries, as well as transportation customers. It occupies a total of about 35,000 square feet of leased space in Woodinville.

Meridian Capital, of Seattle, served as the exclusive adviser to the Hilses in their sale of the company to Sound Rite Plastics.

Both companies offer mold design, mold construction, and injection molding, and tout their abilities to meet precise molding specifications. They also perform a variety of secondary operations, such as machining, sonic welding, and pad printing. 

Ultrasonic plastic welding is an industrial technique that involves the joining of thermoplastics through the use of heat generated by high-frequency mechanical motion, along with applied force, thereby creating a molecular bond between parts. Meanwhile, pad printing is a printing process that uses a silicone pad to transfer imaging onto three-dimensional objects.

Of the factors leading up to the acquisition of Mold-Rite, Meyer says, “We were competitors. We have very similar product mixes, but we only had two common customers out of the roughly 50 customers we each have. We were somewhat equal in size.”

He says the two companies had one fairly large common customer that’s excited about the two plastic parts makers now being under consolidated ownership because of the added reliability, security, and flexibility that merger provides.

The companies’ customers are located mostly in the Pacific Northwest, he says.

Meyer says he would like to enlarge the workforces at both plants, but adds that he’s “having significant problems in hiring at both locations,” even though the plants offer decent wages and good benefits. He attributes that largely to the current low unemployment rate, but says he’s also noticed that a lot of potential employees these days don’t seem interested in working in an industrial-type setting.

Accurate Molded Plastics had occupied about 35,000 square feet of space in the Coeur d’Alene Industrial Park, but constructed a 20,000-square-foot addition to its manufacturing plant six years year ago and bought another building on its five-acre site there to boost it to its current size.