Profile: Wayne A. Lundeberg
Cluster has helped form industry's pattern of success
By Alan D. Fischer
ARIZONA DAILY STAR
Aaron J. Latham / Staff
Wayne A. Lundeberg knows that strong demand for products containing plastic, including the ubiquitous cellphone, means prosperity for the Arizona Plastics and Advanced Composite Materials Cluster. Lundeberg is the group's vice president.
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The Arizona Plastics and Advanced Composite Materials Cluster has been molding the plastic industry's success here for three years.
The cluster has benefited the industry by tackling issues including work-force development, legislation affecting the industry, attracting new business to Arizona and marketing the plastics industry, said Wayne A. Lundeberg, the cluster's vice president for Southern Arizona.
"Trying to make it a more economically friendly place - that is really the bottom line," he said.
Lundeberg, who has worked on the cluster since its July 1998 inception, said the plastics industry already boasted numerous industry associations and groups that kept abreast of issues such as technical advances. So the fledgling Arizona plastics organization focused on doing what it could to boost business for area firms.
The plastics industry's injection molding process requires skilled workers to design, build and operate the precision devices used to manufacture products. These tool-and-die workers are in high demand, and firms nationwide have trouble finding enough skilled workers, said Lundeberg. He is president and CEO at Catalina Tool & Mold, a Tucson company that makes products ranging from high-tech communications components to irrigation-system parts.
"Work force is one of the primary issues that comes up again and again with this industry," said Stephanie B. Lemme, director of economic development at the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce.
The cluster has worked with Pima Community College and the Southern Arizona Institute of Advanced Technology to develop courses to train people for such jobs, Lundeberg said. Area high schools also work with the cluster to develop and identify students with talents needed for industry jobs.
"This is a high-tech field. We have new software, new pieces of equipment, coming in on a daily basis. We have to have those places we can take our employees for training and continuing education," he said.
In addition, the plastics industry uses an apprentice program to train workers. The five-year program, which includes a mix of classroom and on-the job work, earns participants journeyman status.
At Catalina Tool & Mold, people entering the apprentice program start at $8 an hour, and the company pays for classes, he said. Quarterly performance-based raises can jump hourly pay by $1.50 to $2 over a year, he said.
"By the time you're finished, you're in the $16-to-$17-an-hour wage range, and after that, as you get into project leadership and things, $22 to $24 an hour is really pretty standard for Tucson," he said. "Those are good jobs."
The cluster also monitors legislation that could affect the industry, he said.
For example, cluster members worked together to kill or revamp several proposed bills introduced after a Phoenix fire last year was reported widely - and inaccurately - to have taken place at a plastics manufacturing facility. The fire was actually at a furniture plant next to a plastics operation, but the event sparked the introduction of state bills restricting plastics operations, Lundeberg said.
The bills would have restricted plastics operations based on environmental and public health concerns, he said. "There have been five or six House bills introduced that have to do with more environmental controls. It was directly related to the fire," he said.
"If you really read them, it shows there was a lack of understanding of the types of materials, and the types of products, we actually use in this industry.
"We certainly don't want to introduce anything harmful into the atmosphere. We want to play by the rules. But there are some things that could be legislated that could be devastating to us."
The bills were killed or rewritten, he said. "(Legislators) were willing to listen to what we had to say," Lundeberg said. "But had there not been an organization like the plastics cluster, there would not be a place we could go and we could talk about these things."
And the cluster has publicized plastics to the public as well as elected officials.
"To be perfectly honest, before the cluster not that many people here knew Catalina Tool & Mold existed," he said. "From an advertising and marketing standpoint, the cluster has been phenomenal."
The cluster is also working with economic-development agencies to attract original equipment manufacturers - companies that purchase components and combine them for resale - that would use products made by local plastics companies.
"If we can get a Siemens (a maker of energy-efficient motors) or a Nokia or somebody to move a large plant into any place in Arizona, it benefits us all, so that has been kind of a major goal," he said.
About 80 of the state's 520 plastics- and industry-related firms are active in the cluster, a number Lundeberg hopes to increase. "We could use the help," he said. "I think we can get that much stronger with more involvement."
The time he and other cluster backers have spent on the effort has been rewarding, even though cluster work means fewer hours to spend building their own businesses, Lundeberg said. Time spent on cluster activities includes working on economic- and work-force-development issues, meeting with legislators and working with economic-development and business officials, all to benefit the industry.
"We've had successes. We've had wins," he said. "To see how the clusters have been accepted and supported in the community is very rewarding."
* Contact Star Business reporter Alan D. Fischer at 573-4175 or at afischer@azstarnet.com.
