ACS Opens Plant in New Berlin

Looking to grow along with an expanding sector of Wisconsin manufacturing, ACS Group is consolidating its plastics equipment in a new factory in New Berlin.

At a time when many manufacturers continue to stagger from plant closings and mass layoffs, the maker of a wide range of machinery for the plastics industry is moving into a new, 190,000-square-foot flagship factory near W.Cleveland Ave. and S. Moorland Road.

ACS is moving about 20 employees from its headquarters in Wood Dale, Ill., along with 150 from an existing northwest Milwaukee site, and hopes to hire 112 new workers for the expanded plant by the end of the year, said Michael Trombley, vice president of human resources for ACS. Eventually, the company plans to have 350 employees in New Berlin - from mechanical assemblers and warehouse workers to engineers and managers.

"We still have a lot of openings to fill," Trombley said.

Privately held ACS says between its double-digit sales growth and new equipment lines for the plastics, printing, food processing and pharmaceutical industries, it needed to add manufacturing capacity. Consolidating operations in a streamlined plant made more sense in the long run than expanding existing facilities, Trombley said, and the New Berlin location - between Interstates 43 and 94 - is convenient for transportation and for a work force ACS has relied on for about 40 years.

ACS is about halfway through with its consolidation, and started making equipment in the new site a couple of months ago, Trombley said.

The move by ACS plays to one of 11 clusters of industries in which Wisconsin economic developers are trying to exploit geographic concentrations of interdependent businesses. Clusters of plastics-makers, and the equipment suppliers and printers and transporters that support them, are complemented by training from specialized technical college programs, said Scott Reigstad, a spokesman for Forward Wisconsin, a public-private marketing group.

"It makes for a real good infrastructure and base for adding more companies," said Reigstad, whose agency estimates that 36% of the country's plastics manufacturing happens within a 500-mile radius of Wisconsin.

According to the Society of the Plastics Industry Inc., Wisconsin ranks 10th in U.S. plastics employment, with nearly 51,000 jobs, and 12th in plastics shipments, at almost $10 billion, based on 2002 data. The trade group says that in Milwaukee, Waukesha, Washington, Racine and Kenosha counties, 212 plastics factories employ 7,585 workers and ship out $1.7 billion a year in products.

The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development projects 1.6% employment growth for manufacturing overall by 2012, but sees plastics and rubber-making payrolls increasing by a net 7,070 workers, or 20.8% - more than any other manufacturing group.

"I see a lot of the customers in that area growing. The state has supported the plastics industry quite a bit, and vice versa, " said Steve Petrakis, Midwest regional director of the Society of the Plastics Industry.

"The industry is doing better," Petrakis said. "The past four years have been tough, but '05 has been a definite rebound year."

By JOEL DRESANG
jdresang@journalsentinel.com
Posted: Oct. 19, 2005