Making a TurnKey move to Salisbury

7/1/2011
Tony Ward’s favorite quotes is from The Graduate: “One word: plastics.”
After a $1 million relocation, Ward’s TurnKey Technologies Inc. in Salisbury is ready for growth
One of Tony Ward’s favorite quotes is from The Graduate: “One word: plastics.”
After a $1 million relocation, Ward’s TurnKey Technologies Inc. in Salisbury is ready for growth in a business that holds a place in a small corner of the plastics industry. TurnKey and Ward, who is president, make machines that trim, mold, add to and reshape plastic — mostly.
In April, TurnKey began production in a refurbished 44,000-square-foot building near downtown Salisbury that was once occupied by PowerCurbers. Before the move, the company had operated in a 6,200-square-foot Concord building.
“We needed to grow,” Ward says.
The move was aided by a $25,000 grant from a city of Salisbury incentives program to encourage the reuse of existing industrial buildings. “The building had the layout we needed,” Ward says.
Robert Van Geons, executive director of RowanWorks, says the city’s incentives were well spent.
Ward and two partners, Mike Brusich and Paul Galvin, own the company. Together, they decided during a difficult 2005 that the 12-member team of employees they had in place was what TurnKey needed for profitable growth. “We were going to sink or swim as a team,” Ward says.
And they have. In 12 years of operation, the company hasn’t had a single layoff.
You won’t see the company adding staff for busy times that may turn out to be temporary. “Work is going to dictate growth,” Ward says.
Ward expects to add as many as six employees during the next five years.
But the partners are convinced growth is inevitable. Domestic manufacturing is benefiting from higher transportation costs from overseas vendors. That is particularly costly for thermoformed plastic — a relatively heavy product. That trend may help reverse years of outsourcing plastics manufacturing offshore, he says.
And since much of Turnkey’s machines are produced with automation, it cuts the cost of labor compared with Asian manufacturers that do the work by hand.
Some of TurnKey’s machines join metal to plastic to make the attachment of parts more secure. Others trim down plastic to allow it to proceed in an assembly line to form a larger product.
The costs of TurnKey machines range from $500 for the simplest cradle for holding parts for machining to $500,000 for a machine that fills a room. “We don’t make parts,” Ward says. “We make one-of-a-kind machines that process parts — i.e. assemble, weld, inspect, machine, label, serialize, paint, decorate, etc.”
Brusich is working on a digital drawing of a machine that will weld together a plastic bottle, fill it with a product and then place a cap on the dispenser. The machine uses ultrasonic welders to fabricate the plastic bottles. “We’re a small company, but we let technology drive us,” Ward says.
Other products include machines that add parts to the handlebar of the Segway two-wheeler and to the instrument panel of an automobile. One TurnKey machine once welded together plastic parts to form a quick-printing system for Kodak. “Plastics are our main forte,” Ward says.
TurnKey is in a small segment of the plastics business. But Ward says its customers continue to challenge the company. “Something new walks in the door every day.”
kelkins@bizjournals.com