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10 n e w h a v e n B I Z | M a r c h / A p r i l 2 0 1 9 n e w h a v e n b i z . c o m T R E N D I N G At this Oxford manufacturer, the inmates own the asylum By Makayla Silva AT A GLANCE PTA Plastics Company: PTA Plastics, 148 Christian St., Oxford; 7350 Dry Creek Pkwy., Longmont, Colo. Industry: Custom injection molding Year founded: 1953 Annual revenues: $35 million No. employees: 275 Ownership: Employee-stock ownership C onnecticut's some 4,000 manufacturers have created some of their industries' most sophisticated tech- nologies, leveraging the latest and greatest tools of advanced manufacturing and how to innovate with them. ough the conventional wisdom is that manufacturers are an en- dangered species in Connecticut's high-technology and high-cost commercial landscape, many Nutmeg State manufacturers are in fact true movers and shakers in their particular segments of the in- dustry — and regarded as among the best and most capable of their kind on the planet. Take PTA Plastics, a small cus- tom-injection molding solutions company based in Oxford, which has become a nationally recog- nized leader in the plastic injec- tion mold making and production molding industry. e company's two facilities in the Waterbury-Oxford Airport Development Zone of Oxford and Longmont, Colo. feature state-of- the-art technology and employ about 275 skilled engineers, de- signers, toolmakers and machine operators. e 65-year-old company traces its roots to Bridgeport in 1953 as Plastic Tooling Aids Laboratory Inc. at company fabricated models of parts that were pro- duced in plastic using injection molding — a technology then in its infancy. "e original founder of the company [Peter Cherry] was an industrial designer with GE Housewares," PTA Plastics Vice President Michael Rocheleau explains. "At that time, using MEET THE MAKER plastics for manufacturing home appliances was in its infant stages and the founder saw that there was a lack of skills, expertise and companies that could support GE in their efforts, so he broke out on his own, founding PTA." Evolving client base By the 1960s, the company's cli- ent base included Black & Decker, General Electric, Hamilton Beach and Schick before transitioning its client base into the telecommu- nications industry, working with companies like Hewlett Packard and Compaq Computer. As the company continued to evolve from producing appliance parts and validating designs, so did its portfolio. PTA innovations included the first Xerox copier and working with Steve Jobs on Apple Inc.'s first Macintosh com- puter in the early 1980s. By acquiring one of the indus- try's largest molding machines, PTA was able to produce compo- nents for Polaroid cameras and digital phone-switch systems, working with startups like Apple, Dell Computer and Gateway. PTA even produced parts for the Coke Freestyle beverage dispenser offer- ing 100 different flavor combina- tions of Coca Cola products. "We moved into technology as we came through the late '80s, carrying us through the '90s," Rocheleau explains. "But by the early 2000s that high-tech product started moving offshore for pro- duction forcing the company to reinvent itself and we began to fo- cus our sales and marketing efforts on the medical-device industry." Working with Zoll Medical, PTA played a role in creating one of the first heart defibrillator devices. PTA has also become registered with International Traffic in Arms Regulations, allowing the compa- In the 1950s PTA Plastics was a pioneer in the then-nascent technology of injection plastic molding.

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