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By Roger Renstrom
CORRESPONDENT
Published: August 27, 2013 3:50 pm ET
Precision Plastics Printing Co. and its Precision Blow Molding Inc. division moved in August to larger quarters in Anaheim from Fullerton in Southern California.
“The Fullerton building was getting too small, and we needed more space and power,” said Bob Bhagat, president and co-owner with his brothers Patrick and Hiten. Patrick deals with production, and Hiten oversees sales.
The new location includes about 40,000 square feet of space for blow molding operations, 15,000 for printing and 45,000 for warehousing. The brothers own the building. They also own the 50,000-square-foot Fullerton building.Precision’s key end market is cosmetics bottles.
Precision Blow Molding operates eight Bekum high-speed, dual-station extrusion blow molding machines with four, six or eight cavities. The units include four H-111s, three H-121s and one H-155. Two of the H-121s and the H-155 can operate in a mono- or multilayer mode with a W. Müller head.
For PET applications, Precision began operating in July a 70DPH injection stretch blow molding machine from Nissei ASBPrecision bought its first Nissei ASB, a model 50MB machine, in 2008.
A four-cavity Uniloy Milacron blow molding machine makes 1-gallon containers of high density polyethylene. Precision bought the machine from a company that was closing.
Manie Rhalter founded the printing company in 1963 in Gardena and sold to the Bhagat brothers in 1991.
Rhalter, 94, continues to visit the business once a week and is treated like a family member, according to Bob Bhagat. “We just renewed his license for five more years.”
The brothers moved the operation to Long Beach in 1992 and Fullerton in 1996.
The firm can print more than 600,000 bottles per day using eight state-of-the-art, multicolor, automated ultraviolet-light-protection bottle printing systems with ultraviolet-light protection from Omso North America
The printing firm’s first Omso went into operation in 1993 and was “so much faster” than previous systems that Precision decided to start making its own bottles in late 1998 with its first Bekum blow molding machine.
The blow molding operation uses co-extrusion and multilayer processes to make custom orders and five stock lines of bottles including proprietary soft-touch and PVC products.
The firm uses computer-aided design/manufacturing to create precise drawings of a plastic bottle concept and can help to procure tools.
Having blow molding and printing in the same facility saves on transportation costs, the company noted.
Of the business’s 70 employees, 55 function primarily on the blow molding side and 15 in the plastics printing operations.
Bhagat projects a sales increase of 15-20 percent in 2013 vs. last year. “We have grown every year,” he said, but he would not release details.
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