Dow automotive plays new role as a custom injection molder. (Your Business in Brief).

Dow Automotive of Auburn Hills, Mich., a business unit of Dow Plastics, is trying something new: injection molding and assembling automotive parts and modules at a car assembly plant in Brazil. This is the first known case of a major polymer supplier entering the automotive injection molding field.

Dow Automotive has begun to make parts at a 129,000-sq-ft facility in Ford Motor Co.'s industrial park near Salvador, in Bahia State, northeastern Brazil. The park is dedicated to making Ford Fiestas for domestic and export markets. Dow says its new "pellet-to-part" service supports its role as "materials integrator" at the Ford site. "This aligns us with a strategic customer at one of the automotive industry's leading industrial parks," says Bob Rogowski, director of Dow's Integrated Sites Unit, which will manage the molding facility. Dow installed 12 Engel injection presses that range from 330 to 2530 tons. Also in place are a paint line, glass-bonding equipment using Dow's Betaseal polyurethane adhesives, and ultrasonic and hot-plate welders.

The major materials to be used at the molding site are Dow's own polypropylene resins and compounds, including TPOs and glass- and talc-filled PPs compounded at a Dow facility near Sao Paulo. Among the 20 parts to be molded by Dow are front and rear fascias, interior and exterior trim, floor consoles, instrument panels, wheel-well liners, and radiator grilles. Parts will be delivered on a just-in-time basis to the adjacent Ford assembly line.

In explaining Dow's forward integration into molding, Rogowski says it puts the company in close contact with Ford and such associated suppliers as Visteon and Faurecia. It also helps Dow keep on top of new developments in automotive molding.