What We Make Augustine Die and Mold provides variety of services to diverse customer list

Dec. 10—Editor's note: What We Make, a bi-weekly series, will spotlight innovative and dynamic companies driving the local economy through manufacturing and distribution, technology development and education, all while connecting our region to the world.

SOMERSET, Pa. — The extent of services provided and products produced by Augustine Die and Mold is as vast as their customer list, company leaders say.

The company does tool and mold design, building, maintenance and repair; waterjet cutting; precision machining; plastic injection molding; and metal injection molding for contracts with the U.S. Department of Defense, the aerospace and medical industries, and other customers around the world.

"If it's made out of metal or it's made out of plastic, we can do that under one roof," company partner and CEO James Brown said.

Anthony Augustine Jr. founded the company in 1995, in his garage, and still holds a key leadership role today.

Due to his quality and satisfied customers early on, demand quickly increased for Augustine, and five years later, he purchased a 31,000-square-foot building in the Somerset Industrial Park.

Eight years after that, he acquired a neighboring plastic injection molding division and founded Augustine Plastics Inc.

Then, two years later, in 2010, the founder combined the facilities under one roof in a 221,000-square-foot building in the industrial park, where more than five dozen employees now work.

"The success of this business was Tony (Augustine) taking on the hard jobs ... and figuring it out," Brown said.

He added that Augustine took a big risk in continually buying state-of-the-art equipment and taking on contracts with extremely precise specifications, but that paid off for him and the company.

Some of the work the business has produced in the past 20 years ranges from blast shields for ammunition boxes on Abrams tanks; the tool used to produce a plastic Slinky; crucial parts for oxygen concentrators; pieces used on the International Space Station; parts for an in-development electric plane; components for the nuclear power industry and coal-fired power plants, and much more.

Their products also goes as small as a plastic ear molds used in deer taxidermy, plastic hat racks and Lego sorters.

Additionally, the business is aerospace standard AS9100 and ISO 9001 Quality Management System certified.

Brown credits the dedication and "tremendous amount of work" of the employees for the company's success.

"There's a lot of really good people here," he said.

One of those employees is recently hired manufacturing engineer Ryan Ream.

The 23-year-old was an intern at the company in 2021 who worked his way up to full-time employment.

"It's exciting because it's always something new," Ream said.

His job is conceptualizing and designing 3D models for injection-mold parts that the company will produce.

Ream said there is never a boring moment at Augustine Die and Mold, and he often works directly with the founder, who teaches him a lot.

He added that he's quite happy with the job and although he's only been there a few years, he can't county the number and variety of projects he's worked on.

Brown said the depth and breadth of work by Augustine makes the business unique.

However, finding skilled labor to meet those needs has been hard.

Brown came on board around 2015 after he provided consulting work for Augustine.

He said he was naturally drawn to work with the founder and was impressed with his operation.

Brown said Augustine offered him a job and, through negotiations, the now-CEO became a partner in the business.

Since then, Brown said, business has grown by nearly 700%.

Today, the company still targets the main five categories for contracts — aerospace, defense, energy, medical, and water and wastewater treatment — while still continuing to update equipment to stay competitive and streamline operations.

One of the key machines at the facility is the 16-by-26-foot waterjet table, which Brown said is one of just a few in the country.

That's used to cut patterns from large and thick pieces of metal, which other companies can't accommodate, Brown noted, providing the example of explosion-fused sheets of metal provided by one customer.

"The role that we play gives us cause to be quite proud," Brown said.

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