wiredinUSA July 2013

Plastics acquisition Westlake Plastics Company (WPC), a manufacturer of extruded and compression-molded high performance thermoplastic products, has announced a change of majority ownership.

French company Actimed has invested $6.5 million in WPC and is now the majority stakeholder in the company. Westlake Plastics and Actimed already have a 30-year working relationship. Actimed’s MTD subsidiary has served as Westlake

Plastics’ exclusive European distributor. MTD will change its name to Westlake Plastics Europe under the new ownership. With the Actimed investment, all of WPC’s previous debt has been retired, and remaining funds will be reinvested in the business for capital equipment and raw materials. Randy Altland, CEO of Westlake Plastics, will remain in this position. Michael Kirschnick, a 30-year industry veteran with experience at Wittmann Battenfeld Inc and Husky InjectionMolding Systems, has recently joined the company as national sales manager. Altland said that Westlake Plastics would become a much stronger company with the new ownership team. “We’ve been in a re-engineering effort the past two years, and now the business has the resources it needs to execute on critical manufacturing and invest in human resources,” he said. “We have already reinforced our management team with additional customer-focused plastics industry veterans.”

wiredInUSA - July 2013 i I l

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