Owners of plastics firm acquire Kamco assets

The owners of West Chicago-based CIMA Plastics Corp. have acquired the assets of Schaumburg-based Kamco Plastics Inc. The purchase price was not disclosed.

The two companies, which employ 350 people and operate 65 injection molding presses, will continue to operate separately but both will be run by Doug Malm, current president of CIMA. They aspire to build their combined business to $100 million or more, according to the investment bank that initiated the acquisition, which closed Nov. 8.

Plans to accomplish this include future acquisitions and growth. The purchaser of Kamco Plastics was a shell company, KPI Holding Co., which then assumed the Kamco name.

Alicia Campos is the majority shareholder of CIMA and its chairwoman. She becomes chair of Kamco as well.

Kamco produces automobile and electronics plastic parts, while CIMA makes industrial, appliance and electronics plastic parts.

"This is an opportunity to take two really good companies and combine them to make them even stronger," said Shawn Mock, vice president of business development at CIMA, adding CIMA and Kamco are doing well at a time that the industry in general is thinning out.

Together, the two companies will operate under a strategy in which "each molder brings unique capabilities" to the table, according to Darrell Butler, president of investment bank Billow Butler Co. LLC.

Kamco, which operates out of its Schaumburg plant and a facility in Reynosa, Mexico, will now share its Mexican facility with CIMA, which has just one plant, in West Chicago.