For Contract Manufacturing Skills – Companies rely on CTI

For contract manufacturing in this country, one name stands out. Conversion Technologies International (CTI) is the go-to resource for leaders in almost every industry. With those credentials, you can be sure that we offer only top-notch service and results.

Why Utilize the Services of a Contract Manufacturer?

Many leading companies, no matter the industry, are constantly bringing new products to the marketplace or improving existing products. Always working to maintain and grow market share, they understand that it is critical to invest in developing and improving products.

However, the process that a manufacturer must go through to develop a new product or improve an existing one can be very costly. That is where the services of a contract manufacturer come in. A company can achieve a huge savings if they contract part of the process to a contract manufacturing expert.

How A Contract Manufacturer Can Help Develop New Products

New product development is a costly endeavor, but necessary in order to grow market share. Most companies, as large as they may be, may not want to invest in setting up an entire research and development department. The investment in machinery, equipment, engineers and staff may be prohibitive. Additionally, they may not want to spend the time and effort to recruit researchers familiar with their industry and materials.

The most effective solution is to utilize the services of a contract manufacturer with a known success rate. When searching for a company to handle this task, they must find a partner with a proven track record. This partner must also offer the experienced professionals and quality equipment to carry out the mandate.

CTI is the source for major corporations and for smaller businesses to handle their R&D requirements. With the engineers, technicians, machinery and equipment in our dedicated lab, we can handle a wide variety of research requests. By designing our facility in a modular fashion, it allows us to easily handle both large and small products and processes.

The Value of Using a Contract Manufacturer to Improve Existing Products

This can also become a major expense. A company that wants to add waterproofing, an adhesive layer, or lamination of a different material to a product to improve its quality or capability can face months of research and testing.

However, we have the immediate resources available to begin the design, sampling, testing and manufacturing processes. No major investment in machinery and equipment required. Human Resources doesn’t have to search for talent with the requisite experience. CTI is ready to take on your project as an extension of your business. We can assist with your development and eventually production, wherever in the supply chain you require our manufacturing services.

The value in our capabilities and professional approach is that you waste no time setting up research facilities. Additionally, our clients don’t have to make a major investment in machinery until they know that the anticipated product will work to grow their company. No company wants to make a huge investment in a new product or process, only to find out that the sales it generates don’t offer a large enough profit margin to cover the initial investment.

Specialty Services Offered by CTI

We offer both toll and contracting services. As you probably know, toll manufacturing provides a complete “white label” service to companies who need to outsource the entire production and delivery process. From sourcing the raw material to delivering the finished product to a distribution hub, a toll manufacturer handles the entire cycle.

Contract manufacturing, also a form of outsourcing, provides a portion of the production cycle to assist the client on a temporary or permanent basis. At times, a manufacturing company may require additional space or capacity. Furthermore, they may not have a research and development department on-site and have a need to create a new product. These are all instances where a contract manufacturing company steps in and handles the additional work. This solution allows the manufacturer to concentrate on their core competency without distraction.

By working with our clients as partners, we are able to handle any portion, or the entire manufacturing process to mitigate either their cost or their production of the excess volume. When there is a temporary spike in orders, a company may not have the ability to handle the additional volume. That is where we can provide support.

Add Products to Your Line with Ease

Moreover, a company may want to add a product to their line, but don’t have the machinery, space or technicians to take on another manufacturing project. They may need us to produce the new item either temporarily or on a permanent basis. In other words, a contract manufacturer’s facility can become an extension of the client’s business.

The three areas in which we specialize are Adhesives and General Coatings, Laminating and Slitting & Die Cutting services. We will explain our capabilities for each of these disciplines, since they each carry a unique set of protocols.

Adhesives and General Coatings

Our full-service coating facility has the specialized equipment necessary to process a wide variety of coatings, including:

• Hot melts
• Water-based adhesives
• Fire retardant
• Water-repellent
• Spray adhesives

Some of the materials that we handle include:

• Acetate
• Latex
• Silicone
• Urethane
• Neoprene
• And much more!

Additionally, we process substrates from non-wovens and paper to vinyl, chipboard and textiles.

Our facility offers cure temperatures up to 350°F, surface areas up to 120 inches wide for materials and roll weights up to 2,000 lbs.

Some of the features we offer on adhesives for your products range from abrasive, conductive and non-skid to water-based, water-soluble and transparent. Whatever your issues with an adhesive or coating process, we have the specialized equipment to provide the appropriate solution.

Lamination Services

In contract manufacturing, a resource must be capable of providing a broad range of solutions for clients in specialized industries. We have experience with the following methodologies:

• One-sided
• Two-sided
• Hot melt spray
• Slot die
• Hot Roll
• Knife-over-roll
• Thermoplastic
• Meyer rod coating
• Hot Melt
• And much more!

Our contract manufacturing service capabilities range over a broad spectrum, so that we can offer our partners some of the unique solutions not found elsewhere. We are proud to offer some services here in the USA that companies may have previously had to source overseas. By serving a broad range of clients, our experts have experience working with materials intrinsic to the automotive, construction, aeronautic, furniture, consumer products and fiberglass industries, among others.

Powdered Adhesive Process

When a project requires a lamination involving adhesive, we also offer powdered adhesive processes that produce a stretchable or breathable lamination. We utilize our water-based equipment when laminating water-based adhesives. That equipment includes gravure, knife-over-roll and Meyer rod.

Some of the substrates that we laminate include:

• Cellular sponge
• Polyethylene
• Cork
• Polypropylene
• Silicone
• Foam
• Fabric
• Natural rubber
• And many more!

Our lamination facility handles both medium and long runs, with typical lead times ranging from 1 to 6 weeks.

Slitting & Die Cutting Services

In addition to our laminating, adhesive and coating facilities, we offer customizable slitting & die cutting services. Our state-of-the-art equipment includes flat-bed die cutters, allowing us the unique capability to cut from sheet or rolled form. We handle materials up to 5/8” in thickness and sheet sizes up to 40” x 60” and rolled materials up to 60” in width.

Having a diverse clientele in varying industries requires that we offer some of the highest quality technologies in the country. Relying on our uniquely-talented engineers and technicians, our customizable equipment, and our fast response time, our clients know that we can provide solutions to their process-engineering issues. They consider us as a supplier of a valuable service.

Our slitting & die-cutting services provide solutions to clients in the following industries:

• Automotive
• Office furniture and partitions
• Roofing materials
• Vinyl
• Fiberglass
• Rolled goods
• Construction materials

The die-cutting methods we use include flat-bed, steel rule and belt-fed.

We handle production volume in both medium and long runs, with a typical lead time of one to six weeks. Our equipment handles widths between 24” and 120” with a maximum thickness of 1” and roll weight up to 2,000 lbs.

Our Clients

As a contract manufacturing organization with technical expertise and an excellent reputation, we are proud to serve some of the most influential brands in the country. They know that we can offer them services that are difficult to find. Also, they realize quickly that they can call on us whether they need a temporary facility for production or any of our other services and that we will provide a successful outcome. As partners working with major corporations to resolve issues or develop new products through our research and development facility, our reputation has grown over the years. In business since 1993, we are an experienced contract manufacturer and have seen the advances in products, materials, techniques, equipment and processes.

We have provided some unique solutions for our clients and we discuss them in detail in our case studies. Reading through them, you can see that we work as a true support system to help our clients achieve success.

However, we do not limit our scope to major corporations. We are proud to serve small businesses that require additional capacity or technological assistance with product development.

Some of our clients include:

• Clorox
• DuPont
• General Motors
• Lear
• Firestone
• Steelcase
• Hanesbrands
• Owens-Corning
• Ford

Our Contract Manufacturing Process

Ultimately, our success is a result of our experience over the years. We use a five-step process to ensure that every client is a good match for our services and that they receive an appropriate solution to their unique situation.

1. Initial Consultation – The first step with a new client is always to have a thorough discussion concerning their needs and our capabilities. We want to ensure that these criteria line up and are a good match, so that we can be certain of a successful outcome.
2. Research & Development – When a client needs a new process, is working with a new material or wants to develop an entirely new product, we explain our capabilities and our test/retest ethic. Finding a weakness is better when it happens early in the design phase than later on in production. We want to be certain there are no surprises!
3. Lab Testing/Sample – We believe that a sample in-hand is worth more than a finished product down the line! Our philosophy is to offer inspection of the product at any stage of the process, to avoid major issues later on.
4. Pilot Run – Many manufacturers go right from the research stage to production. The full production run is an expensive operation. You want to be sure that there are no glitches in the first production of a new product, therefore we firmly believe in a limited “pilot run” to be sure that things go smoothly in full production.
5. Production – This is the final step. Contract manufacturing service clients know that working with us and having the advantage of all of our preliminary testing, that the least stressful step will be the full production run of their finished goods. Instead of a nail-biting situation where a major, expensive problem could occur, our production runs are relaxed affairs with a celebratory atmosphere. A smooth production process is our goal.

Choose CTI

We hope that we have imparted enough information about our firm, our reliability, customer service, breadth of services and state-of-the-art facility to interest you in working with us.

Give us a call at 419-924-5566 or complete our quote form and we will be in touch.