Senior Extrusion Consultant Louis F. Fow

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Extrusion and Injection Molding Expert Louis F Fow

Senior Executive with 50+ years’ experience in general management, sales and marketing management, plant and production management, purchasing, product, process engineering, and market development; all related to plastics industry involvement. Started with 6 years of plastics R&D of consumer products.  Specialist involved for 12 years in national and international sales of plastics processing equipment; extrusion, injection molding, structural foam molding, thermoforming and plastic welding. Well versed in machine design, screw design and machine fabrication. Have patents for machine design and process. Was in General Management for over 20 years including operating own extrusion company for 16 years. Sold profile extrusion company after 16 years of profitable operation.

• Strong understanding of the plastics extrusion process, sheet, foam sheet, pipe, profiles, film, fibers and other processes that use an extruder to produce a melt, blow molding, structural foam molding, injection molding, flow molding.
• Strong understanding of screw design. Have had association with Bruce Maddock, Bob Barr, Di Advanti, Cline and Tadmore, (Computer simulation of extrusion), George Kruder and  Have worked for 6 extrusion equipment manufacturing companies, Waldron Hartig, HPM/Prodex, Andres Crespi, Werner & Pfleiderer, Bernhard Ide, and American Kuhne.
  
• Strong experience in tube extrusion for medical applications, single lumen, bi lumen, tri lumen and in polypropylene drinking straws. Have supervised installation, start up and training on medical tubing lines capable of running at 600 to 800 FPM. Have done Field service engineering for American Kuhne
• Experience in machine design for a variety of secondary operations in sheet and profile both in line and off line.
• Have been involved extensively in project management requiring selection and purchase of extruders and downstream equipment to produce a wide range of extruded product, plastic lumber, profiles of a wide range of sizes and materials.
• Have been retained for a number of Expert Witness cases involving product liability, employment and competition, and patent infringement.
• Have been retained to perform due diligence, determining value of assets in extrusion operations for acquisition studies, insurance valuation and to assist management in assessing operations for efficient operation and advise changes to up grade extrusion operations which do not represent recent technology.

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Experience
Private Practice
1991 – Present
Consultant

• Founded to provide specialist extrusion consulting services to industry in Management, Marketing, Process and Process development.
• Organized a small group of consulting associates with a range of talents to assure that the services provided are of substantial quality.
• Have worked with more than 70 large and small companies over 20 years, in process engineering to help reduce costs, develop market and lobbied for state and federal assistance in technical and product development, and consulting in acquisition & due diligence management.

Custom – Pac Extrusions Inc, Chargin Falls, Ohio
1983 – 1997
President General Manager Founder

• Handled all the General management, sales and marketing for the company.
• While managing Custom-Pac, also managed marketing and sales for Custom Materials Inc. my joint venture partner.  Sold company to US Plastic Lumber, Inc.
• 1980 to 1983. The joint venture partner is Custom Materials Inc. Sales $2.9MM profitable.

Custom Materials Inc, Chargin Falls, Ohio
1982-1985
Director of Sales

• A fabricator of metallic and non-metallic parts primarily for the electrical generation, distribution and motor markets. 
• Reorganized the sales and marketing of the company.  
• Sales grew from $2.3MM to $9.2MM as Custom-Pac grew to $3MM sales.  CMI was a joint venture partner in Custom-Pac Extrusions Inc.

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Johnson Rubber Corp, Middlefield, Ohio
1979 - 1981
Executive Vice President

• Complete P&L responsibility for division with 245 union employees, a $15MM profile extrusion and injection molding company, Johnson Plastic Corp. and technical responsibility for OEM Corp. and their Norbolt Division, a fabrication and plating operation.  

Werner & Pfleiderer Corp, Waldwick, New Jersey
1976 - 1979
Business Manager

• My group marketed and engineered for US operation, precision profile equipment (Bernhard Ide), plastic welding equipment (Beilomatic Lueze & Co.), and high intensity mixing equipment (T.K. Fielder, Ltd.).    

George Woloch Co, Allentown, Pennsylvania
1974 - 1976
Production Manager

• Employed as Production Manager to manage a 170,000 sq. ft. plant with 55 union employees producing 3MM#/mo. in thermoplastic compounding and industrial recycling.   

HPM Corp, Mt. Gilead, Ohio
1971 - 1974
Area Sales Manager

• Covered the eastern seaboard selling plastics extrusion equipment.  Personal sales ranged from $1.1MM to $1.8MM.
• I managed the $6.3MM Eastern sales office last year of employment.  

Waldron-Hartig Division - Midland Ross Corp, Somerset, New Jersey
1968 - 1971
Field Sales Engineer

• Sold plastics extrusion equipment in northern New Jersey and SE states. 
• After sales training in Northern New Jersey for a year, I developed $1MM sales in new SE territory in one year and had $1.4MM sales in the last six months of employment. 

Union Carbide Corp, Bound Brook, New Jersey
1962 - 1968
Plastics Technologist I

• Employed as R&D technician in the Consumer Products Div. process and product development group while going to college at night. 
• I worked with a wide variety of thermoplastic and thermoset plastic processes.

US Marine Corps, Honorably Discharged
1958 - 1962

• Top Secret Clearance, Infantry NCO, MP, Small arms expert, radio communication.

​Education

• Rutgers The State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1962 – 1969
  • BS Marketing & Economics 
• Seton Hall University, Madison, New Jersey 1969-1972
  • MBA Program
• Technical and Business Management Courses
  • Attended many technical and business management courses and seminars.
  • 1986 - COSE Strategic Planning course, Cleveland, Ohio.

Holder of Patents
Patent number 4,626,186 - issued Dec. 2, 1986 - Apparatus for forming drum handling rings
Patent number 4,680,068 - issued Jul. 14, 1987 - Method for forming drum handling rings
These patents were developed to produce plastic drum handling rings using profile extrusion and plastic welding processes.   

Contact Louis
Dr. Hauger strongly recommends Lou for a wide variety of extrusion projects as our practice leader.