Challenges in the supply chain in recent years have led to opportunity for domestic manufacturers, said Andrew Sherman, president, CEO and founder of the PMT Group in Euclid.
The PMT Group is a specialty materials company, with subsidiaries making magnesium alloys, magnets and more for a variety of industries. Powdermet, the first company in the group, got its start in 1996. Last year, the larger PMT Group brand was introduced.
Sherman is seeing growth in the group — and he sees ample chance for that to continue.
“What’s really kicking it off is the global supply chains, the pain in that, has opened up opportunity for on-shoring and domestic production,” Sherman said.
The PMT Group has a relatively young local management team, he said, as well as the space and power for those kinds of advanced manufacturing operations.
Sherman brought Powdermet from California to Ohio in the early 2000s. Euclid Mayor Kirsten Holzheimer Gail in an emailed statement said that Sherman and the company “have continued to invest and grow through innovation and the development of new materials and technologies” in the years since.
Much of that took place through spinoffs. Sherman had previously spun out and sold MesoCoat, a metal coatings company that later ran into some financial trouble. After that came Terves, which makes dissolvable magnesium alloys for the oil and gas industry.
The trouble there? The oil and gas industry has seen significant ups and downs since Terves’ founding in 2013. It was time to diversify, Sherman said.
Sherman said the model of what is now PMT Group had previously been to spinout companies and then raise funds for each individually. But he saw a lack of interest in funding fossil fuel-related companies, such as Terves, and it’s just tough to get funding to start manufacturing or materials companies. There’s not a lot of financing in the lower middle market; Sherman declined to share specific revenue for the family-owned company, but placed it in that category.
Enter the new PMT Group branding, introduced in 2021. During the pandemic, the PMT Group launched four new brands (technically Powdermet subsidiaries): Magnesium USA, Cratus, Hybrid Materials LLC and Magnet Energy, which make up the group alongside Powdermet and Terves. The newer companies are more focused on renewable and sustainable products, in areas like lightweighting and decarbonization.
The PMT Group also will soon launch Cermetech, on which Sherman is working with his former partner from MesoCoat. They’re working to make pre-ceramic polymer resins for coatings for a variety of applications.
Through the PMT Group, Sherman and team can raise capital for all of the brands together, rather than trying to raise funds for one at a time.
And the group is seeing growth, which means the PMT Group needs more space. This year and next, PMT Group will invest about $8 million and add about 30,000 square feet to its specialty metals plants in Euclid. PMT Group currently has five buildings, or about 90,000 square feet of space, on approximately 14 acres of an old TRW site in Euclid, Sherman said.
First up, with a groundbreaking in August, is a 5,000-square-foot expansion of Terves’ dissolvable magnesium extrusion plant. That will allow for “longer and lighter and lower-cost extrusions,” Sherman said.
The company also will break ground on a 24,000-square-foot building for its magnetic materials and sheet and foil production in 2023.
The group has been expanding its facilities over time. And this latest expansion will lead to hiring, too. The PMT Group currently employs about 60, and Sherman expects that to grow to approximately 100 after the expansion.
