Remaking Reko

In response to customer demands for overflow molding services, Reko International Group Inc. is purchasing an 80% interest in a Michigan molding company. Reko will become the majority owner of Superior Plastics, while current owner Norm Mackie retains a 20% interest.

“Reko has pursued this acquisition to further our growth and to support our customers’ needs for low-cost overflow molding capability. We expect to provide a cost-effective solution on shoot and ship components,” explains Steve Reko, chairman and CEO of Reko International, based in Oldcastle, ON.

Chief operating officer Gordon Young explains that Reko’s mold tryout capacity had become absorbed by customer requests to run production parts. So the company is expanding its capacity to run parts with the purchase of Superior, which has 27 molding presses at four sites in Rochester, MI.

“We don’t want to compete against our customers,” says Young. “There is more than enough overflow molding to keep Superior busy.”

The molding capability adds one more tool to Reko’s “Tool Box” concept, which is how the company is marketing its capabilities as a full-service supplier. Reko traditionally presented itself as a moldmaker that had additional skills, but there has a been a shift now to position the company as a manufacturing and engineering firm serving both plastic and metal forming sectors. Most of Reko’s customer base is large Tier 1 and Tier 2 automotive companies.

Concurrent with the marketing shift, Reko has remade its internal operations, especially on the moldmaking side, to embrace lean manufacturing.

“We have developed a system which allows us to mass produce one-of-a-kind items,” says Steve Reko.

In effect, explains Young, “every tool follows a consistent process. The only thing that’s different is the math data. We have manufacturing cells set-up for specific components.”

“Conceptually, we don’t follow the progress of the tool; we follow the components. This alerts us to problems much earlier. Overall, this new process has streamlined our tool build function by several weeks.”

And so, a reorganized sales force is set to knock on doors promising more services, delivered more quickly, at a competitive price — a combination that should keep Reko’s market share on its current growth curve.