MAKER: D&L Tooling and Plastics Inc. in Jacksonville

PRODUCTS: Frisbees, flower pots, large totes and baskets, cattle tags and an item that works as drainage for football fields are a few of the products manufactured at the service-oriented, custom injection molding plant. Hangers, trash cans and bins are made at D&L for its longtime customer, national retailer The Container Store. As a full-service provider, the business also offers product testing and evaluation, hot stamping, solvent bonding, sonic welding, light assembly, packaging and decorating services, shrink wrapping, tapping and drilling, heat staking, foil stamping, labeling and custom packaging, according to www.dlplastics.com.

BACKGROUND: For more than 45 years, D&L has been an independent manufacturer of plastic products for a wide range of industries, including telecommunications, medical and recreational. At the 24-hour-a-day, 60,000-square-foot manufacturing plant, nearly 70 employees churn out a variety of products for customers in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Darrell Dement, D&L vice president, said his father established the business as a tool shop in 1968. It eventually drifted more toward molding and continued to expand. At one time, his father was doing about $1.5 million in sales per year, but today it’s close to $8 million, Dement said.

D&L’s electric molding offers precision and repeatability from shot to shot, along with increased cycle times, quality and molding control. D&L uses the latest technology with its fourth generation real-time production and process monitoring system for up-to-the-minute reporting, job tracking and logging, analysis, and scheduling of all production. The latest technology lowers power consumption and scrap rates, and decreases housekeeping requirements, allowing D&L to be extremely competitive, the website states.

CONTACT: D&L Tooling and Plastics, at 950 SE Loop 456 in Jacksonville, can be reached at 903-586-9894 or www.dlplas tics.com.