Flambeau Purchases Mastercraft Companies

Flambeau, Inc., Baraboo, WI, and Mastercraft Companies, Phoenix, AZ, completed an agreement for the purchase of Polycraft Industries, Inc. and Mastercraft Mold, Inc. - together Mastercraft Companies - by Flambeau for an undisclosed amount. Mastercraft Companies' Phoenix facilities and personnel will be focused on expanding Flambeau's pursuit of medical market and precision injection molded industrial market applications.

Flambeau currently offers a wide range of proprietary medical products including EMT/EMS boxes, first aid boxes, medical instrument boxes, and other products. Mastercraft Companies, an experienced mold-maker and contract manufacturer of precision injection molded products, has built a core business with OEM medical device market and medical disposable products. With its class 7 clean room manufacturing capabilities, extensive tool making knowledge and skills, and experienced engineering and production personnel Mastercraft has become a leading "go-to" solutions provider for high-quality precision injection-molded parts and assemblies.

Jason Sauey, CEO of Flambeau and President of Nordic Group, notes the integration of Mastercraft into Flambeau provides Flambeau with a solid platform for growth into medical markets. "Mastercraft has built a strong reputation and track record of serving a variety of medical market applications. We are excited to have added Mastercraft's skills and offerings in the medical market and look to expand our market reach with a wider offering of capabilities and footprint."

Continuing, Sauey adds "Mastercraft has a long history of building reliable and complex tools for precision injection molding applications. The Mastercraft people know how to build high quality molds. This capability is very important for a wide variety of medical and industrial applications requiring close tolerances and systematic quality."

Regarding the association with Flambeau through the merger of Mastercraft, Arle Rawlings, Mastercraft's owner and President, states"After a lot of consideration I am determined Flambeau was a good fit for the perpetuation of the business I started. I feel comfortable with the people at Flambeau and Nordic, and I am confident their approach to business will serve the people I worked with for many years well while the financial base and resources of Flambeau will provide for greater growth opportunities going forward."

Beginning in December, 1968, Rawlings started Mastercraft Companies with two leased rooms, a limited number of machines and two employees. Today, Mastercraft Companies utilizes two buildings with over 58,000 square feet and serves a variety of Fortune 500 customers with their precision mold-making and injection molded parts requirements. Mastercraft serves the precision injection mold building and molding needs for the medical, electronic, aerospace, military, consumer and industrial markets as well as automotive, packaging and point-of-sale. Many of these customers have come to rely on Mastercraft Companies' significant expertise in tool-building and molding technology. The extensive design, engineering, and tooling knowledge and capabilities of Flambeau and Mastercraft gained through the years of experience possessed by both Arle Rawlings and Nordic Group will combine to create a formidable design and tooling resource under the Mastercraft name.

Flambeau, established in 1947 and owned by Nordic Group of Companies, provides a network of operational facilities for cooperation in serving customers, international sales capabilities, and extensive tooling, managerial, injection and blow molding experience. Since 1947, Flambeau has provided turnkey, total resource contract manufacturing partnerships with their worldwide OEM customers fulfilling applications for custom thermoplastic parts and assemblies, with specialization in injection molding, blow molding, and insert molding processes; decorating, tooling and specialty equipment, as well as, plastic transportation/storage boxes and cases. For further information on Flambeau's capabilities, please visit www.flambeau.com or call 608-356-5551.

Mastercraft is ITAR Department of Defense registered, ISO 9001 Certified, MIL 45208 Qualified, UL approved, and utilize injection molding machines from 40 to 440 tons. Services include product design and development engineering, prototyping, mold making, conventional and clean room manufacturing and secondary operations and assembly. Secondary operations include sonic welding, silk screening, painting / EMO-RFI shielding, pad printing, hot stamping, value-added assembly and next day shipping for west coast customers.

Flambeau, Inc. is a member of the Nordic Group of Companies, Ltd. The Nordic Group (headquartered in Baraboo, Wisconsin) is a privately (family) owned holding/management company consisting of subsidiaries with 18 service and manufacturing facilities, and 26 marketing units around the world with over 2,600 associates. Nordic Group companies manufacture and market plastic, seating and transportation products worldwide for industrial, commercial and consumer markets. For more information or catalog, write Nordic Group of Companies, Ltd., 414 Broadway, Baraboo, WI 53913 USA, visit www.nordicgroup.com, fax: 608-356-5773 or e-mail: info@nordicgroup.com.