Darryl Gratrix is a veteran tool and die professional with over 25 years of experience in manufacturing. He currently serves as Production Manager at MPC, a Canadian injection molding company that focuses on automotive parts and complex engineered components.

Nate Wheeler is the host of the popular Manufacturing Insiders podcast. He also owns weCreate, a nationally recognized marketing agency that helps manufacturers grow, save money, and become more efficient.

In this episode of Manufacturing Insiders, Darryl Gratrix addresses one of North America’s most pressing manufacturing challenges – the skilled workforce crisis that threatens reshoring efforts. He explores why young people are avoiding manufacturing careers despite growing opportunities and examines the educational and economic barriers preventing the next generation from entering the trades. The conversation reveals how wage stagnation and outdated perceptions continue to hamper recruitment efforts across the industry.

Gratrix shares practical strategies from his work with youth apprenticeship programs and discusses the fundamental changes needed in how manufacturing presents itself to potential workers. He outlines the disconnect between modern manufacturing facilities and public perception while addressing the economic realities that make traditional apprenticeship models less attractive than they once were.

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Nate (00:01.301) Welcome to Manufacturing Insiders today. I have Darryl Gratrix with me. He is a veteran in the tool and die trade with over 25 years of experience. He’s a real expert in the field. Not only is he an expert in the trade itself, but he’s an advocate for the trade, involved in some really prestigious organizations that promote youth getting into these skilled manufacturing trades, which I think is so important right now.

Another really interesting fact about Darryl is he is a Canadian manufacturer. I thought that he could bring some really unique insight to some of the uncertainty that we’re seeing in the marketplace right now, and maybe even bring us a little clarity on the subject. So welcome to Manufacturing Insiders, Darryl, glad to have you.

Darryl Gratrix (00:51.04) Thanks for having me, Nate. I mean, you know you’re getting old when people start referring to you as a veteran.

Nate (00:58.927) Well, people have been referring to me as a veteran since I was like 25 because I was Marine Corps for four years. Absolutely. So I’m really interested to hear – well, let me start with what I think most people are kind of anxious to hear – what’s your perspective on this shit show? That might be the proper technical terminology for what’s going on.

Darryl Gratrix (01:30.626) That would be a good way to describe it. I think, as everyone’s been talking about, the uncertainty is the killer, right? It would almost be better if the tariffs just came in and were done with, and then everyone would figure out how to move forward with the tariffs. But the on-again, off-again scenario just has nobody knowing what to do exactly.

You know, all the big OEMs have all kinds of stuff on hold. They’re afraid to release them because they don’t know what’s going on. So the uncertainty is a killer right now. Everyone’s kind of in hold and wait mode.

Nate (02:10.754) What percentage of MPC’s business is tied to the US?

Darryl Gratrix (02:18.798) About 35-40% goes directly into the States. Fortunately, we fall under the latest version of free trade, so our parts won’t be tariffed, which we found out in the last few weeks. So that was a relief for us.

Nate (02:38.018) Is that the USMCA? So I think your initial impression was there was going to be 25% tariffs. That was kind of the fear. And then this was more or less an exemption to specific products.

Darryl Gratrix (03:00.078) I saw a release today. It looked like most automotive parts will fall under that category. But anything that’s not will be a 25% tariff as of May 3rd, which is a couple of days from now. So we’ll see if that actually happens again or if it gets pushed off.

Nate (03:26.266) So of the 35 to 40 percent that’s tied to the U.S. or going directly to the U.S., what percentage of that is automotive?

Darryl Gratrix (03:38.542) Probably most of it – at least 95% automotive.

Nate (03:44.141) I’m curious what your take is on the motivation for the tariffs. We kind of chatted about this before. It seemed like the official storyline was fentanyl. I did a little research on it and it looks like as far as what’s actually seized, only about 1% of it is Canada or the Northern border versus the Southern border.

But then looking a little bit further into it, I noticed that because of duty free situations, there’s a lot of stuff that’s coming through the mail that maybe Canada may have a higher percentage of than, say Mexico. I don’t understand it all, but I think a lot of people question the official storyline of fentanyl.

Nate (04:45.624) being kind of the prime motivator for this and also kind of slightly bitter over the fact that there was supposed to be a free trade agreement between the US and Canada. What’s your speculation on what the real reason is?

Darryl Gratrix (05:04.074) It’s pretty tough to get inside the head of someone and figure out what the real motivation is. But to me, I think the root cause is just trying to bring manufacturing back to the States. Would I agree with the way that it’s being done? Probably not. In terms of the fentanyl, I think that’s just another kind of distraction tactic. But I think the definite root cause is to bring as much manufacturing back to the States as he can.

I’m not sure if you did any more research since we last talked to see how tightly the automotive industry in Ontario is tied to the automotive industry in the Northeast Midwest States.

Nate (06:07.866) Very tightly tied. A lot of back and forth trade between assembly and production. And I think that’s probably why the exemption was sort of necessary. It was like, we really can’t do this. It’s just going to hurt everybody.

Darryl Gratrix (06:28.456) I think so many of the big players were screaming that it was going to kill the automotive industry in North America. He’s listening and cooler heads are prevailing in terms of the auto industry anyways. I mean, we’ve got enough struggles as it is without adding that in.

Nate (06:52.28) Speaking of struggles, I guess I don’t know if you would consider it a struggle or not, but it’s a pretty big day in Canada. What was it yesterday or the day before?

Darryl Gratrix (07:07.118) Monday, April 28. Election Day.

Nate (07:09.72) A little bit of a surprise there.

Darryl Gratrix (07:17.1) Personally, I think it’s just indicative of politics overall. It just seems to be so hard for any party to find a good solid leader anymore.

Nate (07:36.651) I can never say his last name correctly. So I usually just say Pierre. He really kind of shit the bed. I mean, the guy had it. The guy had it. I mean, he had no reason to lose. Then what I’ve taken away is, he didn’t really want to talk because he was afraid the media was going to throw him under the bus, which they were going to do anyway. And he wouldn’t go on podcasts. He wouldn’t speak to his voter base and ended up kind of giving it away.

Darryl Gratrix (07:45.942) We refer to him as PP.

Darryl Gratrix (08:20.648) I would agree with that. It seems with politics everywhere now, they spend so much time slinging mud at the other parties instead of trying to sell everybody on what they’re going to do for us. Even a month ago, two months ago, this election seemed like a no brainer, a slam dunk. But I think the conservative party really has to do some deep soul searching and figure out who’s going to be their next leader. If I heard correctly, I don’t think he even won his own seat.

Nate (09:04.654) Right. Which is just sad. It’s spineless leadership. So I’m concerned for Canada. I really am. I don’t know where your leanings are, but I think everyone in Canada kind of agreed that the direction they were heading the past several years hasn’t really been the right direction. And the same could be said for the US. I mean, I’m not throwing stones, but…

Darryl Gratrix (09:42.029) That’s funny because when you were talking, I was thinking the same thing. I’m more concerned for you guys.

Nate (09:47.487) I’m very optimistic about the future. Yet I think we can all agree that the execution of what’s going on right now is not great. However, I think the intention is good. I think manufacturing is important. It’s important to Canada, it’s important to the US, and that’s what’s going to create a stable future. And when we’re shipping all of our jobs, depending on China for critical supplies, that’s not a safe place to be.

Darryl Gratrix (10:27.21) I think for both our countries the good news is that our people are so resilient and determined that they’re going to come through and make things work regardless of who’s leading us.

Nate (10:42.67) I think that’s definitely an optimistic outlook. I think you’re probably right. It’s just a matter of how much pain we’re going to experience in the meantime, right? So tell me, what does a day in the life of a production manager look like?

Darryl Gratrix (11:04.962) It’s dealing with people a lot. I’ve got right now between our operators, our maintenance department, our setup process techs, I’ve got approximately 30 people that I’m responsible for directly. So it’s touching base with those different groups throughout the day. When problems arise in production, it’s bringing everyone together to try and solve the issues as fast as we can and keep things running.

Nate (11:43.096) What’s the most difficult part of that?

Darryl Gratrix (11:48.462) Probably, like everything in no matter what industry or business you’re in, it’s always communication, right? Making sure that our communication is done quickly and concisely. You know the old game of broken telephone, how quickly that happens if you rely on hearing something from someone who heard it from someone else. It’s a lot easier and quicker just to go right to the source and get the real story and base your decisions on that correct information.

Nate (12:21.998) Right. Which stages in the process or which departments do you typically see the most issues in communications occur?

Darryl Gratrix (12:34.046) Well, those are the people that I’m directly responsible for, but then we also have another 30 people in our engineering and tooling department who are working on new tooling, new projects, but they’re also working on engineering changes on tools we’ve got going in production. So the big thing is bringing all three of those groups together. That’s probably the toughest one for communication.

Nate (13:06.104) And with your background in tooling design, right?

Darryl Gratrix (13:11.054) More I was on the machines building the tools and then before production manager the last five years I was the tool room manager.

Nate (13:20.086) So you’ve had enough experience with the different areas of the business that it’s probably good to have somebody like you in that position to really facilitate the communication.

Darryl Gratrix (13:31.21) We’ve had a couple times already where that background has helped us where we’re troubleshooting and you get someone telling you, “No, I can’t do that. I can’t do this with the tool and its processing.” And then I’m like, “Well, no, that’s not actually true. We could do that with the tool. Let’s go that way.”

So it’s definitely an asset having that technical background. And that was part of the reason that I moved into this role. For the past three or four years through no fault of anyone else’s, the last couple of people that were in that role didn’t have that technical background. So communication was even more of an issue because they were getting two or three different stories from different departments and then just couldn’t help make that decision.

Nate (14:26.766) Right. We kind of talked about that before how when you have somebody that’s in a really technical job, it’s very easy for them to kind of default to the really complex explanations for things. And unless you really understand how that’s done, you kind of can call that out.

Darryl Gratrix (14:46.978) The old “just baffle them with bullshit,” right?

Nate (14:51.552) Right, exactly. I see a lot of that in my industry. So you’re passionate about the next generation and I’m just curious, well first of all just tell me about some of the organizations that you’re involved in an advisory role. I also, it looked like you kind of have your own organization related to trades.

Darryl Gratrix (15:22.014) I have turned it into a business, but let’s for now call it a hobby. It’s not a money generating operation. It’s more of a long-term thing, possibly to work on in retirement. But maybe I’ll give a quick background on how I got into this because it’s all kind of tied into why I’m passionate about promoting skilled trades to the next generation.

When I was growing up, I wasn’t what they’d call mechanically inclined, wasn’t working on cars and all that kind of stuff. My dad would do home renovation stuff. I’d help out with that. Had some uncles who were farmers I’d work with there. But in high school, I had no clue what I wanted to do, but I knew I wanted to go to university. So I did, I went and got my three year BA in geography.

So by my third year, I realized that I was going to have to do something different to get a job. And I’d been using AutoCAD and heard there were lots of jobs in tool and die making. So I took the leap and did it after university, did a two year college program in tool and die, and then worked 15 years in the stamping industry. And then the last 12 years in the mold industry.

So that’s kind of my story in a nutshell. As you become a veteran in your career and you move on, you realize you really need to spend time training the next generation to share the knowledge. And then over the last couple of years, that’s turned into, well, not only do I need to do that, I need to help recruit the next generation because there aren’t that many kids that are interested in our trades.

Almost three years ago, I got involved with a group, an organization called the Ontario Youth Apprenticeship Program. So I’m on the advisory board in Simcoe County, which is our school board for machinists, tool and die and mold maker. And for our trade specifically, we have what’s called Accelerated OEM. So kids in grade 12 do a co-op and then for two months, they also go to college and do their level one apprenticeship schooling.

So they graduate high school having already finished one of the three levels of apprenticeship schooling and they’re signed up as an apprentice and have almost six months of their hours in. And so that really has got me going on being a skilled trades advocate. And then time flies. It’s almost a year now I’ve been on LinkedIn advocating for the skilled trades there.

That’s really taken off and through that I’ve made more connections in the last year than I did the first 27 years of my career. So recently I’ve joined the SPE Society of Plastic Engineers, Mold Technologies Division on the board. And one of their main goals is education and spreading that knowledge about our industry. And then just last week, I joined the board for CAM, which is the Canadian Association of Moldmakers.

Nate (18:59.096) That’s a lot. I don’t know how you have time. How do you have time? Does your wife ever see you?

Darryl Gratrix (19:01.07) Unfortunately, we’re at that stage of life where I’ve got four kids – two of them are moved out, one’s in grade 11 and one more in grade five. So 10, 15 years ago, there’s no way I could have been doing all this stuff. But now I’ve got more time in the evenings and the weekend. And I love doing this. So it doesn’t feel like work.

Nate (19:32.664) I can tell you’re passionate about it. So what have you learned over the past couple of years being more deeply involved in the next gen sort of stuff, what’s working, what’s not working? Because this is not just Canada. This is the U.S. – everybody’s having this issue right now.

Darryl Gratrix (19:54.812) That’s why I see it’s one of the biggest obstacles of reshoring everything to the States and to Canada is not only the infrastructure and building all the facilities, getting all the machines in – we just don’t have the skilled tradespeople to make all this stuff happen. But definitely for our trade specifically, everyone or almost everyone knows what a carpenter does, electrician, a plumber, HVAC, but 2% of the population maybe knows what a machinist does, a tool and die maker, mold maker, even a millwright.

So that’s definitely one of the big challenges, just education for students, parents, teachers, guidance counselors at schools – sharing the knowledge with them, the information so that they can pass that on to students. That’s one thing that has worked. It was a year ago, we had about a dozen high school guidance counselors come for a tour at MPC. And we have two buildings, one of them is only three years old.

So they were absolutely shocked to see what a modern manufacturing facility looks like, right? Everyone has this impression that factories are dirty, dark places that no one would ever want to work in. So they were shocked. And then we had another couple tours in the last month with more guidance counselors. But one thing that came of that was at the end of March, one of our local high schools had a Skilled Trades Night. So I went and set up a table for MPC.

And then when I was there, I realized the teacher who organized it looked familiar. So I was talking to her and realized she was through our place last year on the tour. And she said that it was actually that tour that motivated her to start this skilled trades night because nobody knows what manufacturing looks like now, right?

Nate (22:05.338) You’re absolutely right. Actually I interviewed a guy, a pretty cool dude. He’s got a website called the tool and die guy.com, but he works for a tool and die shop. He’s older – I don’t know his exact age, but he’s older than you even. So yeah, real veteran. He’s really big on this conversation about apprenticeships and he’s kind of going back to what he did for an apprenticeship back in the day and kind of drawing comparisons between what’s available today and just how it’s lacking in substance.

Even the length of the programs that are offered in the US are a lot shorter than what they were back then. So they aren’t getting as well developed as an apprentice after all that. But he talked about the fact that 20 years ago, everybody knew what tool and die was. Like you could talk to anybody, the person at the grocery store and they would know, but now nobody understands what it is.

And I just think that’s such a shame because it wouldn’t be that difficult to fix. We have all these educational shows for our kids. You got Blippi going through the toy factory and this and that. Well, why can’t we have them go through a plastic shop? Because I think what you guys do is cool and I think a lot of people would because the things you’re making are awesome. I mean, they’re going into everything that we use every day.

And you guys are using technology, you’re using AI, you’re using a lot of tools that everyone thinks is cool and flashy. You guys have been using it for a long time. So I don’t think it’s that difficult. You have a great product to sell in terms of that marketing message, but we’re just not putting any investment into it.

Darryl Gratrix (24:09.902) I agree 100%. If I had even more time, that would be the next thing – I’d be making more videos at work and getting those on YouTube. I’m not on TikTok at all, but apparently I’ve heard of Andrew Brown. He’s a big skilled trades promoter in the States. More construction trades than manufacturing, but he just started putting videos, just shorts out on TikTok, YouTube, maybe something else a couple of weeks ago sharing some stats. The views are in the millions already.

Nate (24:50.702) Those are the platforms we need to be looking at to engage the younger generation. But I think if you kind of have that multi-tiered approach where you’re hitting them as children with a lot of this programming that they’re watching, a lot of it kind of mindless and meaningless, but kind of introducing them to the concept of manufacturing. Then you’re getting them in grade school, then you’re getting them in high school.

And by the time they’re ready to actually do something, it’s already been well-planned in their minds. But I think the bigger… There is also the concept of the free market, right? So if the money is there, then it’ll sell. So that’s the other problem, I think, is that these guys are going to get paid 16 bucks an hour, which isn’t really that attractive anymore as an apprentice.

Darryl Gratrix (25:53.454) You’re right. That’s a big obstacle we have. I don’t even know where to begin on that one. I know even when I was young, earlier on in my career, 15, even 20 years ago, the guys were telling me that they were making as much an hour in the late eighties as they were 20 years ago. And the rates are still pretty stagnant.

So it’s another big obstacle, right? Especially in automotive, we’re a tier two supplier. So we’re further down the food chain than say working right at Honda or Ford or GM, any of the OEMs. It is a big challenge. And to be honest, I don’t know what the answer is with that one. It’s not easy. It’s not like we can just flick a switch and start paying them an extra 10 or 15 bucks an hour to start to make it attractive.

Nate (26:58.264) Right, yeah, that increases the per part cost and it eventually gets back to the consumer. Are there any alternatives? Are there any alternative options? I just heard something interesting the other day that they were kind of taking inmates from the prisons and getting them trained in the trades, in the manufacturing trades, which I thought that was kind of a cool concept. I mean, it’s a win-win. I mean, you’re getting people that are happy to be out of their cell and doing something, but then you’re also giving them some usable skills that they, when they get out, they kind of start to build back up. So I think that’s cool, but I don’t know what the numbers are. Like is that, how many people are we talking?

Darryl Gratrix (27:51.254) It’s definitely an option. But I would like, I’m almost at the other end. We’re in high school. Like it’s always been for our trades, the kids that they’re trying to push into our trades are at the lower spectrum of the education system. And it’s always thought that, well, this is probably as good as he’s ever going to do. Whereas like, no, I want you showing all the kids in high school what our trades are. Let us talk to them. And we want the smartest of the smartest because they’re the ones who are going to push our trade to the next level.

Nate (28:37.106) I agree. And also there’s the concept of like, yeah, okay. So you start out with $16 an hour. I think there has to be a higher end. I mean, there has to be like a, so it used to be when, I was talking to this guy, the tool and die guy, Phil Kerner. He could get up to 40 bucks an hour, I think was the max rate, which that’s really freaking good in that time period. But still, they probably the max rate they would ever get up to is $40 an hour.

Darryl Gratrix (29:13.942) I was going to say that’s in Canadian dollars where we start our apprentices at 23 or 24 an hour, but the max is around 40. So I don’t know what it’s like in the States right now, but even in Canada, to make a hundred grand a year with the cost of living right now, unless you’ve got a partner, a spouse that’s working, there’s no way you could support a family comfortably on that anymore.

Nate (29:38.36) Yeah, you’re certainly not rich.

Darryl Gratrix (29:43.434) Right.

Nate (29:46.875) Yeah, it’s tough. So I mean, it’s a multi-tiered issue and I’m not sure how you fix it.

Darryl Gratrix (29:58.63) Especially in terms of the wage part right now, unless with all this reshoring, they’re going to start supplementing the wages of these people to try and make it more attractive. But in terms of education, the more I think about it, and this is an even bigger task – for over a hundred years now, we’ve been putting kids in a classroom, putting them at a desk and asking them to sit there for six hours, which we know, it’s just not realistic.

Kids need to be moving and doing stuff. I mean, that’s one thing I’ve thought about is do we need to revamp the education to have more things where they’re working with their hands, building stuff, at least moving around to kind of start that training when they’re five or six so that all through school, they’re building various things and working with their hands to try and kind of change that mindset, right? Instead of just sitting at a desk and then being on computers all day, which is what we’re doing now.

Nate (31:08.398) I completely agree with that. I think there’s something just gratifying about working with your hands and about building something and seeing that finished product come together. That doing something on a computer isn’t going to give you that same kind of level of gratification. I really noticed that back when I used to do construction. I loved it, one of my favorite jobs was doing siding because like at the end of the day, you look up at the side of the house and you see exactly what you did and you’re like, that looks good.

It’s tangible, which is really neat. Yeah, there’s also pride too. I’m sure you have instances where you’re with your family or somebody and you’re using a product or you’re riding in a vehicle. You’re like, yeah, we did X, Y, or Z for this where, the thing that we’re using right now. That’s cool.

Darryl Gratrix (32:12.47) It’s a huge monumental task to even think about that. I mean, as a society, I think it’s something that we have to start looking at now because if we did go down that route, it’d probably take 10 or 20 years to implement that, something crazy.

Nate (32:31.928) I don’t think it’s realistic to expect to bring back every type of manufacturing to North America. I don’t think that’s reasonable. I think it makes a lot more sense to focus on high value added manufacturing. I think that’s what we need to be focused on.

Darryl Gratrix (32:57.262) And that’s the kind of stuff we do. All the easy molds went overseas years ago. So what we’re left with is the highly complicated molds, over molded stuff that not everybody can do. Or they’re just not willing to put in the engineering time and the tooling time to make it work.

Nate (33:22.154) And as far as the low value added stuff, maybe it does need to be subsidized. Maybe wages do need to be subsidized because if you’re doing it for national security reasons, you’re clearly not doing it for economic reasons. And maybe that’s what needs to happen.

Darryl Gratrix (33:40.502) We’ve had a few jobs where we’ve quoted what it would cost us just to buy the material for a mold. And again, in Canadian dollars, it’s $20,000 for all the components. And we can get the same mold built in China shipped over here for like $35,000. There’s no way that their molds aren’t supported or funded by the government somehow.

Nate (34:14.894) Right. Wait, did you say those numbers right? Did you mean 35?

Darryl Gratrix (34:18.222) Yeah, $20,000 for us just to buy material. Just buy material. But we’re getting a finished mold from them for $35,000.

Nate (34:31.514) $35,000, okay.

Nate (34:36.154) So I mean I’m just trying to understand that. So if you can get the materials for $20,000 with that scenario there you could make $15,000 profit. Well obviously you have labor costs but you know.

Darryl Gratrix (34:51.093) But ideally we’re trying to build the molds ourselves, right? That $20,000 in material – if we finished that mold and remember, we’re not selling the mold to make money. Ours are all used in the house. By the time we factor in all our labor and all our machine time, that mold is probably going to be $50 or $60,000.

Nate (35:18.714) Okay, got it, got it, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. I’ve heard even more drastic price comparisons between what it would cost to do it in the US versus China. Although, their average manufacturing wage right now is I think $12 an hour.

Darryl Gratrix (35:40.536) So which five years ago, 10 years ago, was probably in the single digits. Big change.

Darryl Gratrix (35:49.696) And it’s not like they’re using old equipment, right? They’ve got enough throughput now that they’re using all the same modern equipment we’re using.

Nate (36:03.928) Yeah, they’ve definitely transformed their economy. So with these events that you’ve held, job fairs, etc. What kind of ROI do you get in terms of actual interested students or people that actually got into apprenticeship programs have you seen?

Darryl Gratrix (36:30.286) So there’s different events, the ones through OEAP specifically for Machinist Tool and Die Moldmaker. The last two years, I think we’ve had 14 kids apply to the program and be accepted. And the program’s about 12 years old. In the years past, I think they were only seeing four or five, six kids get into the program. So in the last couple of years, we’ve seen an improvement there.

But if I go to just a regular skilled trades open house with all kinds of different trades, there’s still not a lot of interest in our trades. All day seems right now, definitely electrician is a hot trade. We’re going to have more electricians than we know what to do with. It was last June, I went to one open house and had six people, six kids give me a resume. They all wanted to be electricians.

So there’s still lots of work to do for selling on coming into machinist tool and die and mold maker trades.

Nate (37:14.338) Yeah, that’s a drop in the bucket.

Nate (37:47.715) I’m curious, what does it cost, what does it physically cost to put together these events?

Darryl Gratrix (38:02.446) Well, most of them are in the evening. Basically, in terms of myself and MPC, I’m just doing that on my own time. So there’s no real cost to the company.

Nate (38:16.942) Right, you’re volunteering. And you don’t really have to pay for a venue.

Darryl Gratrix (38:22.272) No, these are all free.

Nate (38:27.17) Okay, like we have this manufacturing day here down at our convention center where they’ll have a couple hundred manufacturers that bring stuff in, set up, all the school kids come through and… Yeah, I’m just thinking about ROI because I really think that if we could create the right advertisement, just like we’d advertise anything else, and you start to pay to get this stuff inserted into children’s programming and create some TikTok ads, showing cool things being made in manufacturing. I think you’d get some really good results out of that.

Darryl Gratrix (39:13.166) I’ve seen that in the last year on LinkedIn. I’ve seen those results. I can’t put an ROI on it for what I’m doing in terms of an actual dollar value, but just in the interest that’s generated in the response I’ve got – I started last June with zero followers and in the next couple of days, I’m probably going to hit 6,000.

Nate (39:43.332) Wow.

Darryl Gratrix (39:43.914) It’s definitely, you’re right. If we put that time and energy into making some cool TikTok videos, it would probably go a lot further.

Nate (39:55.225) So what are MPC’s kind of long-term goals? Is the company pretty happy and stable where it’s at? Are they looking to grow?

Darryl Gratrix (40:11.662) Right now we’re in a good position in terms of our staff. We’ve got a solid base. We’ve got capacity. We had our big expansion a few years ago. We were busy during COVID making face shields and did well. So we were able to add a bunch of new injection molding machines. So we’re actually in a good spot right now where we’re probably sitting at I don’t know, 55, 60% capacity.

So we have all the equipment sitting there with a solid staff. So we could add a lot of work with adding little staff, and then we’d be in an even better position. And that’s kind of how we’re positioning ourselves with everything that’s going on right now – there are companies that are in trouble. And so we’re trying to make sure that everyone knows we’ve got available capacity. If something happens to one of their other suppliers then we’re there to help them out.

Nate (41:16.185) That’s smart. Are you involved at all in how you’re getting in front of these companies?

Darryl Gratrix (41:26.702) No, our one owner, Dave Yehman, he looks after that for the most part. He’s going around visiting all the customers.

Nate (41:37.678) Gotcha. And I mean, you guys present yourself well through the website. I think good messaging looks professional and there’s definitely a lot that was presented right there. I like how you got that onshoring page, which I’d be interested in seeing the analytics on. Like is that page getting search traffic?

Darryl Gratrix (42:00.398) I’m not sure. But that new facility shows really well. We get different customers and different suppliers and we get a lot of comments like they only see that type of facility in Europe. A lot of good feedback. It’s a bit of everything. That’s just the way we’ve got it laid out.

Nate (42:20.504) Really? What’s so, what is the technology…

Darryl Gratrix (42:29.666) The technology, it’s super clean. Like we talked about, everyone has this vision of dirty old factories and it’s the exact opposite. We have people coming through and it’s more comments like, “Wow, it looks like you could eat off the floor in this place.” And it just shows really well.

Nate (42:46.169) That’s great. So if there was somebody that was listening to this that was kind of looking for someone with your capabilities, how would you describe what your ideal customer looks like and what kind of jobs you like to take on?

Darryl Gratrix (43:05.666) Definitely our customers are the ones that have difficult components to mold and they’re having trouble finding someone who can help them mold them. So we’re the solution for that. We’ve got a strong engineering team who can – we get a lot of customers that come to us with parts and when we look at them, you couldn’t even mold the parts in reality.

So we help the customers engineer them, make changes. So it still suits their needs, but we turn it into a part that we can actually mold. And then we’ve got the tooling expertise to build that mold. And then again, the engineering expertise too – with tricky, there’s all kinds of engineered plastics out there now that are more difficult to process and mold. And so we’ve got the knowledge to make that happen as well.

So I would say we’re a one-stop shop to help customers with their opportunities.

Nate (44:08.578) Okay, that sounds like the perfect type of capability. What are some of these new engineered plastics? Like, can you just name a couple of them just for my own knowledge?

Darryl Gratrix (44:28.708) I’ll be honest, I’m not an expert on all plastics yet. But there’s all kinds of differences like glass filled nylons. They’ve got different fibers in the plastic that help strengthen it when it’s set. So a big thing with vehicles is weight reduction. So a lot of these parts, they’re using the engineered plastic so that they’re strong enough to replace a part that used to be made out of metal. And thus, with enough of those, it’s reducing the weight of vehicles by quite a bit.

Nate (45:03.354) Gotcha. So a lot of applications in automotive, probably also some aerospace. Cool. Well, I mean, I love what you’re doing. I hope that you really find some answers to this baffling issue we have right now of how to get kids into the trades. And definitely reach out to me if you come up with some solutions that work because I would love to help you spread the word on them. I also hope that we’re able to kind of quell the turmoil between the two North American countries here.

Darryl Gratrix (45:46.734) I think it’ll pass and we’ll be back to normal before we know it. But definitely coming up with that silver bullet is going to take a whole team of us working on this to try and figure it out. I don’t think one person’s going to have the answer. Luckily there’s from the network we’re building on LinkedIn, there’s a ton of good people after the same thing I am and I think we’ll get there.

Nate (46:18.296) I agree. Cool. Well, hey, thanks for coming on today. I appreciate your time and really look forward to hopefully connecting in the future and sharing each other’s posts on LinkedIn and coming up with some solutions.

Darryl Gratrix (46:31.724) Thanks again for having me. This was fun.

Nate (46:34.764) Absolutely. Thanks, Darryl.

Darryl Gratrix (46:37.646) Bye.