Simmons Pet Food Inc. of Siloam Springs sold the 58-acre property at 1700 E. Quarter Road to Store Master Funding XXXII LLC, an affiliate of Store Capital Corp. of Scottsdale, Ariz.

For mold fabrication, the company added a CNC lathe and three electrical discharge machines (wire, sinker, and hole popper) to complement its CNC milling machine.

Store Capital has entered into a 20-year lease agreement with Metacycle LLC, an affiliate of Little Rock-based Arcane Capital Partners, a privately held investment firm.

“The benefit to customers of our turnkey experience is risk mitigation,” Pontius said. “From CAD modeling to in-house fabrication and repair to prototyping and mass production, the development cycle is under one roof. If a mold has an issue, rather than having it taken out of the machine and shipped away for repair, we can diagnose the problem and repair it in a matter of hours, minimizing downtime and maximizing production schedules,” said Pontius.

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Simmons Foods, the parent company, bought the property out of bankruptcy in 2009 for $2.6 million. Patio furniture maker Syroco Inc. was the seller. Syroco closed in June 2007.

A 386,416-square-foot industrial building in Siloam Springs changed hands recently for $16.3 million. The purchase price equals $42.18 per square foot.

Metacycle, a custom plastic injection molding company, will use the Siloam Springs facility as its primary manufacturing facility.

Lakeshore is helping many companies onshore molds or rebuild molds from a previous supplier that are difficult to remove. For these transitions, Lakeshore helps customers confirm mold and tooling compatibility with its facility, match material and color, review quality control requirements, and plan logistics.

Starting as a mold fabrication company in 2019, Lakeshore provides turnkey services from engineering through to assembly.

In a sign of robust injection molding demand, Utah’s Lakeshore Plastics expanded capacity of its Orem manufacturing facility by about 50% to 12,000 square feet.

Coming soon are specialized molds designed to produce custom plastic caps in various sizes and textures at a lower initial cost.

“In the coming months, we're making available specialized molds to easily swap logos and textures on numerous cap sizes to produce a custom closure at a much lower initial cost,” Pontius said.

Lakeshore produces about four million caps annually and is adding equipment for cap lining. The company owns five injection molding machines (IMMs) from Absolute Haitian, ranging from 100 to 427 tons. Three of those IMMs are paired with top-entry robots from Absolute Robot. Lakeshore’s new manufacturing space can accommodate three more IMMs.

Marshall Saviers from Cushman & Wakefield/ Sage Partners in Rogers represented Simmons Pet Food. Ted Dickey from Lighthouse Asset Advisors in Litte Rock represented Arcane Capital Partners.

“We are excited about what the future holds for our new Siloam Springs facility and thankful for all parties involved in making this acquisition happen,” Arcane managing partner and CEO Michael Hickmon said. “This acquisition will allow us to better serve our customers with a larger, more integrated, and more capable best-in-class facility.”

Automation is critical to Lakeshore’s business. Removing high-end jewelry cases from a mold, for example, requires careful handling to maintain aesthetics, a task that is best performed by a robot. Molding polished parts of clear Tritan copolyester, which degrades quickly with any variation in cycle time, also requires automation. “The ARI top-entry robot is faster and more consistent at removing the part from the mold and prevents damage that could be introduced if a machine operator so much as bumps the mold when removing the part,” said Lakeshore CEO Kyle Pontius.

Metacycle, a custom plastic injection molding company, will use the Siloam Springs facility at 1700 E. Quarter Road as its primary manufacturing facility.

Geoff Giordano is a tech journalist with more than 30 years’ experience in all facets of publishing. He has reported extensively on the gamut of plastics manufacturing technologies and issues, including 3D printing materials and methods; injection, blow, micro and rotomolding; additives, colorants and nanomodifiers; blown and cast films; packaging; thermoforming; tooling; ancillary equipment; and the circular economy. Contact him at [email protected].