New extruder of window and door profiles

Michael Lai, president of Toronto-based Onyx Group of Companies, has provided new details about a downstream joint venture exclusively to Canadian Plastics.

The extrusion equipment manufacturing company is one of the three partners behind Casement Limited, a new window and door profiles manufacturing facility in Toronto. Casement is the latest addition to the Onyx group, which consists of Onyx Extrusion Technology Inc., Shanghai Onyx Machinery Inc., Onyx Tooling and Dies Inc., and Onyx Granulators Inc.

Lai noted that his partners have been in the windows and doors business for more than 20 years, and have an extensive knowledge of the industry segment. He expects the new venture to generate annual sales of $15 million.

“This is a facility with 11 extrusion lines,” he explained in an e-mail interview. “Ten of them are PVC profile lines with Onyx’s conical twin screw extruders with Siemens computer control and over 50 dies. The other is starting production of [wood-plastic composite] decking profiles.”

The 40,000 square foot facility currently employs 30 people. This is in addition to Onyx’s existing machine shop in Toronto.

Casement Limited is not Lai’s first foray into downstream manufacturing. The company also set up a complete doors and windows plant in Moscow in 2002.

On the equipment side, Onyx will also introduce conical twin screw extruders in Canada this year. The company exhibited the ONYX YE-65/132 conical twin screw extruder and ONYX SE-30 co-extruder with a co-extrusion die at the Plast-Ex show held in Toronto in May.