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Charles A. “Chuck” Sholtis, CEO of Plastic Molding Technology, on Rojas Drive, says the auto sector is helping to bring more business to his company, which projects sales to reach $10 million this year.

EL PASO — The Great Recession has taken its toll on many El Paso-area businesses and employees, especially in the manufacturing sector, which continues to lose jobs. But one El Paso manufacturer has not only weathered the storm but is expanding.
Plastic Molding Technology, or PMT, a 36-year-old maker of plastic parts in far East El Paso, has just completed a $400,000 expansion, which included adding 20,000 square feet of space, 12 plastic-injection molding machines, and about 40 new jobs. It now employs about 95 people.
The expansion is one of the signs that the manufacturing sector and the rest of the economy may be emerging from the doldrums of the past two years.
“If you look at the first two quarters of this year,” and the end of last year, “we battened down the hatches, so to speak, to weather the storm,” said Charles A. “Chuck” Sholtis, 49, CEO of the company he owns with his father and brother.
“Now, we’ve turned around 180 degrees” because of new business, Sholtis said last week as he stood in his 60,000-square-foot factory at 12280 Rojas. Small plastic parts for motor vehicles, appliances and other products quietly spit out of mostly automated machines.
“The manufacturing sector may have bottomed out in August, I think,” Sholtis said. “El Paso and Juárez are in a tenuous recovery now.”
Tom Fullerton, an economics professor at the University of Texas at El Paso, said the manufacturing sector on both sides of the border is “recovering in response to improved economic conditions in the United States.”
“Much of the growth in orders is probably related to recovery in the transportation sector, and much of that was kick-started by the cash for clunkers program,” Fullerton said.
About one-third of PMT’s sales are in the automotive industry, Sholtis said. Two of five new customers it picked up this year are in the automotive industry. The other new customers are in electrical products, a traditional base for the company, as well as business machines and appliances.
Its precision-molded plastic components are sent mostly to Mexico and China to be assembled in a variety of products.
An “in your face” sales push beginning in early 2008, coupled with the demise of some competitors, helped bring in the five new customers, and sales are growing again, Sholtis reported.
Sales are projected to reach about $10 million this year.
Tony Tijerina, 50, an engineer in this area’s manufacturing sector for almost 20 years, has seen the recession’s effects firsthand. He worked in a management position for a motor manufacturer for five years in Juárez, where he saw the plant’s work force drop from about 1,500 people when he started there to about 65 people when he was laid off in October.
He was unemployed for only a few days because PMT’s expansion plans opened a job for him as quality manager.
“I thought it would be tough to find (another) position,” Tijerina said. “I was blessed to stumble onto this.”
El Paso’s manufacturing sector lost an estimated 2,000 jobs between November 2008 and last month, according to the latest data from the Texas Workforce Commission.
Those losses continue a long-term trend. The sector employed an estimated 17,200 people in November. It employed an estimated 37,000 people in November 2000.
Juárez maquiladoras shed thousands of jobs in 2008 and the first half of 2009. But maquiladora employment has been “inching upwards about the last five months,” said Fullerton, the economics professor.
PMT was born in 1973 in a recession. That’s when Sholtis’ father, Charles E. Sholtis, left his job as an engineer with Timex, the watch-maker, to form the company in Connecticut.
Sholtis, 74, is still at PMT as chairman and chief technical officer.
“I quit my job; I had 4,000 bucks, and a broken-down (plastics molding) machine. I didn’t know better. It worked out,” the elder Sholtis said.
The younger Sholtis grew up in his father’s plant, and he returned to the company in 1986 after getting a business degree from Villanova University, and doing a three-year stint in the Navy. He became CEO in 1998.
PMT established a plant in El Paso in 2001 because customers were moving plants to Mexico, and they wanted PMT to be nearby. It moved into its current location in 2004, when it closed its Connecticut operations.
It also had a partnership in a plant in Slovakia in Central Europe from 1991 until the beginning of this year, when it ended the joint venture.
“I’ve seen many recessions come and go, and this is the worst I’ve ever seen. It’s enough to lose faith in America,” the elder Sholtis said.
The younger Sholtis said experience from past recessions and advice from a group of outside business advisers, who act as a kind of unofficial board of directors, have helped the company get through this recession.
That doesn’t mean PMT escaped the recession unscathed.
Sales declined last year, and PMT had to lay off about 25 people in October 2008, when its work force declined to about 48 people. It also instituted wage cuts, including for the Sholtises, and made other cost-cutting measures.
Tony Tijerina, PMT’s recently hired quality manager, said, “Running a lean operation has helped them (PMT) get through the hard times.”
The company instituted what Sholtis called an “in your face” sales push in early 2008 aimed at further diversifying its customer mix.
Sholtis, and his brother Todd, 44, vice president of new business development, make periodic sales trips to eight cities in the United States, including Chicago, Detroit and Boston, and in Mexico to call on current and new customers. The company this year also contracted two sales representatives in Mexico.
“If a customer doesn’t know or see you, they are less likely to award work to you,” Sholtis said.
The sales push came after the Sholtises noticed troubling signs in the economy in early 2008, and came up with a plan to prepare for possible bad times, Sholtis said.
Now that sales are growing again, Sholtis and his company are looking to expand into a growing market — manufacturing medical devices.
It now has space for an environmentally controlled “white room,” which is needed for manufacturing medical device components, he said.
“I want to give (other) businesses hope that tough times don’t last (forever),” Sholtis said. “The next phone call may be that (new) opportunity.”
Vic Kolenc may be reached at vkolenc@elpasotimes.com; 546-6421.
For more information: www.pmtinc.com.

Jobs slide
Estimated number of jobs in El Paso manufacturing sector in November in selected years:
1990: 40,700
1995: 44,200
1999: 39,200
2001: 32,400
2005: 22,500
2007: 20,200
2009: 17,200 Source: Texas Workforce Commission.

Rosa Rivera lines up plastic parts with bolts for electrical products last week at the Plastic Molding Technology plant at 12280 Rojas. PMT, which has weathered the recession and is even growing again, recently finished a 20,000-square-foot addition, adding 12 new machines and about 40 new jobs. (Victor Calzada / El Paso Times)