Drumheller Industries is Closed (Zinc Die Casting Company) – Today I drove past the building of Drumheller Industries on 10967 Tuxford Street in Sun Valley, California. I was saddened that the building is for sale. Drumheller Die Casting Company was a zinc die casting company that was in business over 40 years. Scott Drumheller, the last owner of the company, told me his grandfather started the company by building special hot chamber zinc die casting machines. These machines will cast and trim the zinc die casting parts automatically so that the parts drop into buckets.

For over two years, I talked to Scott about the possibility of purchasing his company. He has had declining sales and fewer customers every year. The value of his company was dropping. Unfortunately, Scott felt he needed a job but did not want to work for another die casting company. He wanted to continue Drumheller operations until he had to stop.

In July 2012, Scott Drumheller told me he needed to pay either a penalty or a fine to the state of California to stay in business. This fee was vary large, and amounted to more than 10% of his annual sales. He decided to close Drumheller Industries unless someone would purchase his corporation from him and his liability to the state of California.

I offered to pay him a sales commission and two or three times the value of his equipment for his equipment and his customers. He insisted that the corporation ownership needed to be part of the package. I do not understand how it could benefit him to scrap his equipment for one third of the amount of money that I offered to pay him and why he believed I would take his corporate liabilities or even why he thought it was fair to insist the corporate transfer as part of the package. We could not come to an agreement and he chose to scrap his equipment instead of selling the die casting machines to Kinetic Die Casting Company.

Another California Die Casting Company has closed. This is very sad to me. There are less than one third of the die casting companies in California as there were 20 years ago.

The good news to me is that my company, Kinetic Die Casting Company, is thriving and growing while other companies are declining and closing. Our customers feel safe buying their parts from us. We purchased the mold bases and die casting tooling from the Drumheller die casting auction to service their customers.

Kinetic Die Casting Company 818-982-9200.