Trostel Ltd.
901 Maxwell St., Lake Geneva
Industry: Rubber molding
Employees: 380
www.trostel.com
Fresh off a $7 million, yearlong renovation project at its Lake Geneva headquarters and Whitewater manufacturing plant, Trostel Ltd. has expanded its capabilities and added about a dozen new employees.
The 150-year-old rubber molding and compounding company demolished a 67,000-square-foot portion of its headquarters and built a new, smaller but more efficient 25,000-square-foot addition. The addition has taller, 38-foot ceilings and two new injection molding machines, said Steve Dyer, president and chief executive officer. The facility is now a total of 42,000 square feet.
Trostel, which is owned by Milwaukee-based Everett Smith Group Ltd., has also installed the CNC equipment needed to build its own tools in house, giving it additional prototyping capabilities and creating a new production tools product offering.
With the expanded prototyping and pre-production capabilities, Trostel can assist customers with development of a product from start to finish. It is also working with tier one original equipment manufacturers and its competitors to troubleshoot pre-production challenges using its product design, manufacturing setup and rubber product failure analysis capabilities.
“We now have people coming to us and we may never mold rubber for them, but we may help them with a problem in their production process,” Dyer said.
For example, it now has a 10,000x scanning electron microscope for testing. The company is also looking into metal deposition as a means of rapid prototyping tooling.
“We don’t look at ourselves as competing against other rubber companies in the U.S.,” Dyer said. “We’re competing on a global stage.”
With the new capabilities, Trostel plans to prototype and solve any challenges in Lake Geneva and then send products to the company’s Reynosa, Mexico plant for production.
“A lot of it will go to our Mexico facility once we have it completely debugged,” Dyer said. “Our initial two launches with this new theory have gone remarkably well.”
The company also renovated 17,000 square feet of office space at the headquarters, adding more collaborative work space and group gathering areas.
“Our thought process and our strategy really is to use this as our research and technology hub,” Dyer said.
At the same time, Trostel expanded its polymer compounding facility in Whitewater by 10,000 square feet, bringing it to a total of 37,000 square feet. The increased space will allow for improved material flow and additional investment in machinery.
The company also has a fourth facility in McAllen, Texas, which completes plating and coating operations.
Most of Trostel’s products are seals used in the automotive and appliance industries. Most of its products are custom-made for major customers like Whirlpool, GE and Caterpillar.
It has also been developing business in the oil and gas industry, Dyer said. The automotive products Trostel has developed can easily be applied to larger, heavy duty trucks used in oil and gas applications.
“Customers come to us with a problem and we solve the problem and that’s how we create value,” Dyer said.
A typical automotive part made at Trostel would begin with a metal substrate, which it treats with phosphate and overmolds with rubber. The Whitewater facility produces the rubber compound, which is then liquefied and injected into a mold to produce a seal in Lake Geneva.
An innovative rubber material developed over the past year by specialized material scientists at Trostel has antimicrobial capabilities, and has been popular among washing machine manufacturers, which sometimes struggle with fungus on the rubber portions of front-loading washing machines.
While there is further testing to be done on the antimicrobial rubber, there is definitely a need in the marketplace, Dyer said. It could also have medical and sports applications.
Dyer, who was previously president and CEO of Nashotah-based Dickten Masch Plastics before becoming president of Trostel in February of 2013, says he isn’t finished growing the company. The plan is to double it over the next seven years by taking care of existing customers and going after new markets and customers.
“What I’ve been focused on doing is really developing and empowering a team of world-class manufacturing specialists, material scientists and sales engineers to help deliver Trostel’s value proposition to the marketplace,” he said.
