Plastics News Features MODRoto with Front Cover Story
Plastics industry magazine Plastics News featured MODRoto on the front cover of its annual rotational molding issue. In this article, reporter Gayle Putrich covers the rotomolder’s proud history of innovation and plans for growth.
Molding innovations, employee relations help drive Modroto
By Gayle Putrich, Plastics News
Madison, Ind. — It’s a new era for a tried-and-true brand. After more than a year of transitions and changes, rotational molder Modroto Inc. is sporting a new name, a new look, a new headquarters, new leadership and sharp new focus for the same products its been making for more than 80 years. In that time, the company has been known as Meese Inc., Orbitron Industries, Dunne Plastics and Meese Orbitron Dunne Co. The headquarters has migrated from Saddle Brook, N.J., to Ashtabula, Ohio, and finally earlier this year to Madison, Ind., home of the original Meese Inc. side of the business that started out specializing in canvas laundry carts.
“We just closed down the last of the sewing and basket lines and moved what was left of that operation down to Atlanta,” said Michael Bruce, corporate operations manager. “We needed more floor space and there wasn’t enough work to justify having those lines in two places.”
Laundry carts are still the backbone of the company’s business, along with material handling carts and recycling containers. But Modroto’s own innovations in molding are helping expand the business into more custom molding, said J.R. Ryan, who was named president and chief operating officer of the company late last year.
A proprietary in-mold foaming technique that fires polyethylene foam behind the high density polyethylene skin of a laundry cart creates a light but “extremely, absolutely extremely rigid” prison-grade laundry cart that doubles as a food transportation hand truck, moving hundreds of meals around a facility at one time, Ryan said.
It’s also part of the secret sauce behind Bruce’s rotationally molded two-man fishing boat, which was two years in the making.