A culture of change is working at K+G Machinery Works

Tom Cameron (left) and Peter Idzerda inspecting bottles on the K+G Machinery shop floor.

The concept of staying in your lane – sticking with what you know and are good at – is generally good advice, but it doesn’t hold true for every situation. Mississauga, Ont.-based K+G Machinery Works Ltd., for example, had been a full-service machine stop specializing in blow molding equipment production and services for decades, but crossed out of that lane in a big way recently to provide a wide range of services for almost all plastics processors.

BLOW MOLDING AND BEYOND

K+G was founded over 50 years ago as a general machine shop, supplying tooling to a number of local blow molding companies in the Greater Toronto Area. The company’s new direction was set in 2007, when blow molding industry veterans and brothers Peter and Marc Idzerda bought it and merged it with Peter’s blow molding service company Pitech Industries – although not everything changed at once. “Blow molding remained K+G’s bread and butter for years after Marc and I bought it, and it’s still a big part of what we do,” Peter said. “We maintain a general machining business with a large selection of equipment including conventional and CNC machines, which allows us to meet the needs of our clients for repair and tooling as well as our own OEM requirements. We provide reverse-engineered machine parts for a wide variety of blow molding machines, and we service the blow molding industry with a growing client base covering North America and parts of the Caribbean. There are many different blow molding machine brands out there from many different countries, and we’ve worked on most of them over the years – if it can be fixed, we can fix it.”

But by 2010, Peter and Marc had decided to grow K+G beyond blow molding into a full-service plastics machinery supplier, with a two-pronged strategy: as a sales and service representative for a growing list of international OEMs, and becoming an OEM itself. The guiding principle was simple and classic: filling a void that was identified by talking with customers. “Our market, traditionally, was small- to medium-size blow molders, and in talking with them about how to provide the best support, we kept hearing the same problems: manpower shortages, both skilled and unskilled; rising energy costs; floor space constraints; and a lack of support from the OEMs,” Peter said. “So, we began looking for OEMs we could partner with that were capable of delivering equipment that would meet and exceed our high expectations – suppliers willing to work together with us to answer our clients’ needs.”

As an OEM sales and service agent, K+G is currently the North American representative for fully electric blow molding machines (both extrusion and two stage PET) from Luxber Spain, and fully electric multilayer jerrycan machines from JHB Taiwan – both of which companies offer extremely energy-efficient models. “It’s common knowledge today that electrical blow molding machines offering electrical savings of up to 50 per cent are available to replace older hydraulic machines, and there are options available that can also cut air consumption by as much as 50 per cent, so this is what’s available to our customers,” he said. “This matters for any of our clients anywhere, but especially those in the Bahamas – where we do a lot of business – where they’re paying 45 cents a kilowatt hour for energy.”

In addition, K+G supplies material handling systems from Main Tech Italy, granulators from Adler Italy – with controls that are custom-installed by K+G – and screw compressors and booster compressors from Airpol Poland. “It’s a good, diverse roster of OEMs and it allow us to supply to virtually any plastics processor,” Peter said.

BUILDING IT

And K+G has also become an OEM itself, beginning with building custom automation. “Given the skilled labour shortages that have been part of the plastics industry for decades now, supplying automation was a good first area to focus on, and we got into it a few years ago,” Peter said. “We specialize in building and installing fully or semi-automated systems for product handling and assembly, including end-of-the-line turnstile indexing units, bagging units, tray packers, and palletizers. We target small- and medium-size blow molders with solutions that provide labour savings while also satisfying the tight floor space requirements that many of them have. And all K+G automation offers internet support.”

In addition, K+G has developed an extensive OEM product line that includes control systems, leak testers, dome trimmers, packing equipment, conveying systems, and its proprietary K+G Miser waste reduction system. Here too, the focus is on energy and other savings. “A K+G Miser control system includes a proprietary fully vertical auger feed mechanism that operates based on demand with a frictional hp motor,” Peter said. “Used on a granulator, it tailors the power consumption to the demand, allowing a 10 hp granulator to operate with the same power draw as a 5 hp granulator,” Peter said. “Also, conventional augers take up a lot of room, but the Miser system’s vertical design minimizes the required floor space.”

Part of the company’s transformation involved setting up in a new facility. “In 2016, we moved K+G from its original 6,000-square-foot facility to its current 12,000-square-foot plant in Mississauga,” Peter said. K+G’s new foundation was then solidified when blow molding process specialist and equipment developer Tom Cameron, who was well-known in the field through having been a key employee at such formidable firms as ABC Plastics and W. Amsler Equipment, joined as a consulting sales associate. K+G has also staffed up over the past few years. “We’ve assembled a team of 15 engineers specializing in mechanical, electrical, and preprogramming, so we can take full control and responsibility for all of our projects,” Peter said.

FULL SERVICE

To measure just how far the company has come as an all-system supplier, consider a recent project in Jamaica. “This customer hadn’t done any blow molding before, so we were really starting from scratch, with an empty room in a factory,” Peter said, “We installed a chiller and air compressor with variable frequency drives, an all-electric blow molding machine designed specifically for this company to run six different molds with different cavitations, a leak tester, a conveying system, a material handling system, a granulator, a palletizer, and a stretch wrapper – basically the entire production line. And then we trained the staff.”

K+G’s complete installation in Jamaica.

Successes like this notwithstanding, K+G isn’t immune from some of the problems that plague other shops. “Just like with our customers, we have problems getting and keeping skilled labour,” Peter said. “We don’t like turnover, so we pay our people very well in order to keep them, but we’re always looking to add more.”

Manpower challenges aside, the new K+G is right where the Idzerda brothers and Tom Cameron want it to be: a supplier of turnkey solutions for almost any plastics processing requirement, a full-service company with a lot of arrows in its quiver. “K+G built its name as a full-service machine shop offering manual and CNC equipment, welding fabrication, mechanical repairs, and blow molding equipment production and services,” Peter said. “We still supply all of that, but we’ve expanded very dramatically, especially in the last few years. As an evolving OEM and sales and service agent, we now offer the kind of support today’s blow molders need and we’re also in a strong position to bring our talents in automation and support equipment to other segments of the plastic industry.”