MTI Global sells assets, changes name

ERJ staff report (TB)

The company, founded in 1993 in Barrie, Ontario, as Magnifoam Technologies Inc., has sold its remaining operating assets and changed its name to Zuni Holdings Inc., with a new management team and board of directors.

MTI had financial problems the last few years, posting losses from continuing operations-as of the end of 2009-of about $10 million and $7.1 million in fiscal 2008 and 2009, respectively.

Sales for the company reached $35.5 million in 2009, down 22 percent from $45.4 million in 2008, according to the firm's fourth-quarter financial report.

In the Mississauga-based firm's final three-month statement as MTI, it posted a first-quarter loss of $2.8 million on sales of $5.5 million.

Over the past two years, MTI divested assets and holdings. The most recent was the June 11 sale of its MTI Polyfab business and other aerospace-related assets to 3M Canada Holdings Ltd. for about $24.8 million. Shortly after that transaction, the name change was announced, along with several other moves, including:

-- the resignation of President and CEO Bill Neill;

-- the appointment of Daniel Marks as president, CEO and interim chief financial officer. Marks also is the president and principal of Toronto-based portfolio management firm Stonehouse Capital Management Inc.

-- the election of new members to the board of directors; and

-- the company's intent to transfer its stock listing from the Toronto Stock Exchange to the NEX, a smaller separate board of the TSX Venture Exchange. Zuni completed that move in July and is now trading under the “ZNI” symbol on the NEX.

Marks did not return calls asking for comment, including what former MTI assets Zuni still controls.

Other divestitures of the last two years included the $1.7 million April sale of its Milton, Fla.-based speciality silicone business to Bellofram Corp. in Newell, W.Va.; the December sale of a 51-percent interest in Sterne S.A.R.L., a medical silicone joint venture based in France; and the $7.4 million April 2009 sale of its Richmond, Va., production facility and MTI Leewood assets in Germany to Rogers Corp.

Bellofram plans to integrate the parts manufactured at the Milton operation into its product lines, complementing its rubber diaphragms and custom rubber products with extruded and injection-molded silicone products, the company said.

MTI also shut down its MTI Groendyk plant in Buchanan, Va., in 2008 and its MTI Leewood site in Stockholm, Sweden, in 2009.

From Rubber & Plastics News (A Crain publication)

Press release from Zuni Holdings