I had lunch today with the owner of a die casting company who expressed an interest in selling his die casting company. He does not want to sell his company but he may need to sell it if his sales continue to drop. His annual sales this year will amount to less than one fourth of his highest annual sales. He is too young to retire and he is concerned about his future. The reason he is talking to me today is that I purchased a few other die casting companies in the last few years. You can read more details from our Kinetic Die Casting Company History page.

In 2004 –
C&D Die Casting Company (C&D)
November 2004, C&D in Chatsworth, CA contacted KDC to help produce parts for customers. C&D produced insert tools for their customers in a special custom mold base. These mold bases were very difficult to replicate. C&D announced that they needed to go out of business and KDC purchased those special mold bases and tooling to make parts for the C&D customer’s.

In 2005 –
Spencer Die Casting Company (SDC)
In 2005, KDC contacted the owner of Spencer Die Casting Company, Tom Jordan, to see if he had a small die casting machine available for sell. Tom suggested that KDC come and look at his equipment and make an offer. Tom was frustrated with how the declining California Die Casting industry was effecting SDC. Tom offered to sell the entire assets of SDC to KDC. KDC purchased all the Spencer Die Casting Company assets. Spencer Die Casting Company closed their business.

In 2009 –
Coast Die Casting Company (CDC)
Richard White, the owner of Coast Die Casting Company contacted KDC to say he was ready to sell CDC. He had ran out of money to keep the doors open. July 2009. KDC purchased all the CDC assets. CDC sent all their mold bases and die casting tooling to KDC to continue to serve the CDC customers. Coast Die Casting Company closed.

Kinetic Die Casting Company is aggressively interested in purchasing other small die casting companies. Contact me if you are a small die casting company owner, and you are interested in getting out of the die casting business.

Bob Thomas, President
Kinetic Die Casting, Inc.
818-982-9200

Dynacast Die Casting Company Acquisition – Charlotte, NC – July 19, 2011 – Dynacast International Inc. (Dynacast) announced the completion of the acquisition of the Dynacast business from Melrose PLC. The company’s acquirers are affiliates of Kenner & Company, Inc., a New York-based investment firm, together with Izurium Capital Management and a number of other institutional investors.

The completion of this acquisition puts Dynacast in a strong position for growth, backed by significant investor support and ample capital. Dynacast will continue to operate as an independent company led by its existing management team.

“On behalf of the executive team and the 3,000 employees of Dynacast worldwide, we are delighted at the prospect of working with Kenner & Company and the other investors,” said Simon J. Newman, CEO. “We believe that we have significant growth opportunities ahead of us and we are excited and confident that we will execute these opportunities over the next few years.”

Jeffrey L. Kenner, President of Kenner & Company, Inc. said he was pleased to complete the transaction and praised management for their enthusiastic support and business discipline. “We look forward to working together with Dynacast management to accomplish their growth objectives,” said Kenner.

Financing for the transaction was provided by JP Morgan, Macquarie Capital, GE Capital, and Bank of Montreal.

To get a price for aluminum die casting parts or die casting tooling, call toll free 800-524-8083 and ask for sales. Or email us at sales@kineticdc.com for a fast response on a price quote.

Tony Capaccio of Bloomberg Business News reported last week that Boeing may end up spending $300 million more than is budgeted under its contract to develop a new Air Force aerial-refueling tanker.

Bad news for taxpayers, right?

Wrong — because the company will have to eat every cent of expenses above the ceiling on the development contract, which means if there actually is an “overrun,” taxpayers will be getting extra value at Boeing’s expense.

The story could be bad news for Boeing shareholders, but something tells me when the contract is completed Boeing will come in right at the ceiling.

Of course, that still could mean a zero rate of return, but the development contract leads to production of 179 planes, where the big aerospace company is likely to do just fine.

Thompson: Obama’s new acquisition practices “reward honesty and realism.”
What some observers don’t seem to get about the Bloomberg story is that the Obama administration really has tightened up on contracting practices, so if companies don’t stay within budgets, they lose money.

That’s a powerful incentive not to run up costs, and helps explain why the administration pushed for an early transition from cost-plus contracts to fixed-price arrangements on the F-35 fighter too.

In both cases, contractors will get the best results if they stay within budgets, which is exactly what policymakers were aiming to achieve.

There’s no advantage in bidding low to win and then trying to raise prices, because contract terms are too tight to allow recovery. So the new acquisition practices reward honesty and realism.

Government Got the Best Deal Possible

If you’re still stuck in the old way of thinking, then the fact that Boeing might have to eat some extra expenses suggests the company didn’t have a good handle on costs when it wrote its proposal.

Not so: It bid the price it needed to bid to beat rival Airbus. Both companies knew they would have to price their proposals aggressively to have any chance of winning, and as one senior Boeing executive put it to me, “We left a lot of shekels on the table.”

In other words, Boeing was willing to break even or maybe even lose money in the development phase in order to preserve its 50-year tanker franchise and keep Airbus out of its home market.

Thus, Tony Capaccio’s story doesn’t signal that anything has gone wrong with the tanker program. Quite the opposite — it shows government negotiators got the best deal possible from the winner.

Loren B. Thompson, Ph.D., is chief operating officer of the Arlington, Va.-based nonprofit Lexington Institute and chief executive officer of Source Associates, a for-profit consultancy. Prior to holding his present positions, he was deputy director of the Security Studies Program at Georgetown University and taught graduate-level courses in strategy, technology and media affairs at Georgetown. He also has taught at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

-Industryweek

Chevron said on March 9 it would downsize its global refining and marketing activities to compete in “difficult” market conditions, cutting 2,000 jobs this year.

At a meeting with financial analysts in New York, Mike Wirth, executive vice president of Chevron’s Global Downstream, said downstream market conditions were “likely to be difficult for the next several years.”

Chevron will eliminate jobs in 2010 and 2011, including about 2,000 this year, and take 2010 first-quarter severance charges estimated at $150-200 million, he said.

The company also plans to sell some European activities, including the Pembroke refinery in Wales in Britain, and activities in Caribbean and some Central American markets.

Chevron will review operations in Hawaii and Africa, outside of South Africa, as it moves to further concentrate its downstream activities in North America and Asia-Pacific.

The company currently employs about 62,000 people, not including 5,000 who work in gasoline service stations.

The report, “Winning the Race: How America Can Lead the Global Clean Energy Economy,” released by the Apollo Alliance and Good Jobs First, stressed that this strategy would avoid indirectly subsidizing the growth of clean energy activities in low-wage countries such as China that are emerging as key competitors in the race to lead the global clean energy economy.

“The United States is currently importing about 70 percent of its renewable energy systems and components,” said Phil Angelides, chairman of the Apollo Alliance. “If that trend continues, we stand to lose out on estimated 100,000 clean energy manufacturing jobs by 2015, and nearly 250,000 by 2030. This country needs a comprehensive clean-energy economic development strategy so we can ensure that jobs being created in the clean energy sector stay in America.”

The report illustrates this risk by analyzing the recipients of the Recovery Act’s Advanced Energy Manufacturing Tax Credit (also known as 48C credits), which President Obama recently proposed expanding funding for by $5 billion due to the program’s success. The report finds that, of the 90 companies that received 48C credits for wind and solar manufacturing projects in the United States, 23 also have been investing in similar production in countries such as China, India, Mexico and Malaysia. The 23 companies, which include both U.S.-based and foreign firms, received a total of $458 million in 48C credits for their U.S. projects.

“A portion of this offshore investment is meant to serve foreign markets,” said Good Jobs First Research Director Philip Mattera, who analyzed the 48C recipient list for the report. “But these examples demonstrate that the U.S. share of the global clean energy economy – particularly in manufacturing – is far from guaranteed. 48C projects have helped stimulate the clean energy manufacturing sector, but some recipients are putting their primary emphasis on low-wage production for the entire global market.”

To address this risk, the report recommends a comprehensive strategy to create jobs in the clean energy economy through the entire supply chain. The first step is to ensure an expanded and consistent market for clean energy by passing comprehensive clean energy and climate legislation, and then to expand domestic clean energy manufacturing by:

* Increasing the Advanced Manufacturing Tax Credit by $5 billion, as the president proposed in his FY2011 budget, but adding “clawback” provisions that would enable the federal government to recoup the tax credits if 48C jobs end up being sent offshore.
* Enacting the “Investments for Manufacturing Progress and Clean Technologies (IMPACT) Act,” which would support small and mid-sized manufacturers by providing capital for investments in energy efficiency and for retooling and expanding into the clean energy supply chain.
* Investing in the creation of a well-trained work force that meets the needs of U.S. clean energy manufacturers and would make onshore investment more attractive.