Schnipke has tooling and plastic injection molding operations at its headquarters in Ottoville, OH, and operates a second manufacturing facility in Tucson, AZ. The company is FDA registered and is certified to ISO 13485:2016.

Editor in chief of PlasticsToday since 2015, Norbert Sparrow has more than 30 years of editorial experience in business-to-business media. He studied journalism at the Centre Universitaire d'Etudes du Journalisme in Strasbourg, France, where he earned a master's degree.

"Our acquisition of Schnipke was driven by a focused strategy to deepen our capabilities, capacity, and technical superiority across the entire manufacturing process for medical device components,” said Vinc Ellerbrock, president and CEO of Atalys. “The addition of Schnipke adds two manufacturing sites for scalable growth, broadens our geographic presence and reach, enables us to serve a wider array of customers, and significantly augments our technical capabilities,” said Ellerbrock.

"We are very pleased about our first injection moulding machine from Netstal at SKZ. Especially in times of a shortage of skilled workers, it is important to keep the machinery up to date in order to work with the latest technology. We would like to thank Netstal for their support and are pleased to be able to offer our participants courses at a very high technical level," said Jürgen Kern, site manager of the SKZ in Horb am Neckar.

Earlier this week, another medical injection molder made news when Total Molding Services announced that it has been acquired by Haartz Family Holdings, changing its name to Moldgenix in the process.

Founded in 1967, Schnipke has established a reputation for building tools in-house and designing and engineering molds that meet the medical device industry's stringent requirements for precision at extremely tight tolerances, said the news release. The company claims on its website that it can mold within tolerances of +/-0.001 inches and as small as 0.02 grams in weight. Even smaller dimensions can be accommodated upon customer request.

Plastics injection molder Atalys LLC announced yesterday that it has acquired Schnipke Engraving Co. LLC. Both companies provide injection molding and related services to medical device OEMs. Atalys, based in Rochester, NY, said the acquisition will enhance its manufacturing capabilities, technology, and geographical footprint.

The machine will enhance the existing range of training courses in Horb - including "Machine Operator" or "Certified Setter", as well as courses on injection moulding defects or sampling of injection moulds. The course program includes course options for career changers and specialists. The injection moulding unit from the Elion series is characterized by low noise emissions and optimum energy efficiency. With injection compression moulding (ICM), new fields of application can also be opened up.

Injection moulding machine manufacturer Netstal is providing the SKZ Plastics Center in Horb am Neckar with an Elion 1200-510 injection moulding machine. The official machine handover took place on June 25, 2024. The Elion 1200-510 with a clamping force of 1,200 kN will be used in future for the extensive training activities in injection moulding at the Horb am Neckar site.

"We are proud to provide the SKZ with a machine and thus support training and further education in the plastics industry here in Germany. It is crucial that skilled workers have access to advanced machines to develop their skills in plastics processing," explained Uwe Telinde, managing director of Netstal Deutschland GmbH, at the handover of the machine.

In addition to its headquarters in Rochester, Atalys has manufacturing facilities in Asheboro, NC, and the Dominican Republic. The New York and North Carolina plants have multiple Class 8 cleanrooms for molding and assembly on site; the Santo Domingo site in the Dominican Republic offers cleanroom assembly and automation. The company said it adheres to scientific molding principles and is equipped with presses ranging in size from “near micro molding” to 1,400 tons.

(From left) Uwe Telinde (managing director NETSTAL Deutschland GmbH), Thomas Fischer (senior trainer Injection Moulding SKZ Horb am Neckar), Peter Schmid (head of Application & Training NETSTAL Maschinen AG), André Liebscher (area sales manager South, NETSTAL Deutschland GmbH) and Jürgen Kern (site manager SKZ Horb am Neckar) at the handover of the new injection moulding machine in Horb am Neckar on June 25, 2024.

In February, Atalys announced that it is tripling the size of its existing facility in the Dominican Republic from 15,000 to 47,000 square feet through the addition of a new 32,000-square-foot building. The company said that the new building will be dedicated to manual assembly with complementary injection molding, pad printing, tool repair, and warehousing. The existing facility will become the company's primary plastics processing site focused on cleanroom injection molding as well as secondary operations such as testing and packaging.