Industrial

Company Story

Star Plastics

From its roots in recycled plastics, Star Plastics has grown to become one of North America’s highest quality producers of engineering grade custom compounds.

Sub-Sector

Specialty Chemicals

Date Invested

August 2021

Date Exited

N/A

Akoya Sector Leader

Bob May

Pre-Close

The Opportunity

Sector Leader's Assessment

Alongside Star Plastics’ leadership team, former Sector Leader Bob May leveraged his decades of manufacturing industry experience to build on the company’s position as a premier plastics compounder and distributor.

Tapped as the anchor investment for Akoya’s Specialty Chemicals Platform, Star Plastics is poised to substantially expand its capabilities, capture new share, and more quickly bring added value to its customers.

Value Creation Plan

Created in partnership with Star Plastics’ leadership, Akoya’s Value Creation Plan outlines clear actionable steps to realize the company’s full potential.

Organic Growth Opportunities

Expand the company’s products and services, as well as its geographic reach, adding additional sales resources to reposition the customer mix.
Optimize the use of recycled content for high-performance applications to strengthen the customer’s environmental performance and transition plastics from a problem to a solution.
Help manufacturers more efficiently and cost-effectively produce and finish goods by promoting its tolling and secondary services, and by expanding its plastic trading and distribution activities.

M&A Growth Opportunities

Take advantage of the highly fragmented market to acquire smaller plastics compounders that expand the company’s manufacturing footprint and diversify its customer and market mix.
Leverage these acquisition opportunities to extend the product line by integrating more high-performance compounds, specialty products and elastomers, in addition to tolling and secondary services.

Post-Close

Hands-On Strategy & Execution

Growth Strategy Implementation

Akoya inspires change in three key areas critical to growth.

Talent Acquisition: Star Plastics’ leadership team was strengthened with the recruitment of an accomplished CEO with more than 25 years of plastics and executive leadership experience. Investments in management-level employees across Sales, Accounting, Operations, and HR position the company to drive and support rapid growth.

Capital Investment: Increased capital expenditures are expanding manufacturing capacity while simultaneously producing production efficiencies. Ongoing implementation of innovative vertically integrated compounding capabilities is producing added value for existing customers while opening the door to new ones.

Board & Governance Structure: Serving as Executive Chairman of the Board, Akoya’s Sector Leader is broadening perspectives – helping shape new strategies, and establishing KPIs to measure performance and mitigate risk.

Add-Ons and Exit

As 2022 ended, the acquisition of a nylon recycler created immediate synergies for both companies.

Three new product line extensions addressed growing customer needs, and contracts with key raw material suppliers solidified the company’s supply chain.

News

Contact Us