178 Business View Magazine - October 2016
opened a new, 150,000 square-foot headquarters in
Baraboo’s 80-acre Gateway Business Park. Today, Teel
has over 250 employees working out of three local fac-
tories in the Baraboo area.
Teel is an ISO 9001-certified company, and in 2013,
Teel Analytical Laboratories, a division of Teel Plas-
tics, received certification to the ISO 17025 standard,
marking the organization as a first-class laboratory
in the area of material science and polymer analysis.
“We’ve had the lab for the last six years,” says Thomp-
son proudly, “and we’re able to do a great deal of test-
ing on materials coming in for inspection and also on
finished products. We have four degreed chemists on
staff and so we feel we can really dig down into the
technology and properties of the material to create the
various, different materials that we produce here, our-
selves.”
Thompson says that another one of Teel’s strengths in
a very competitive sector is its deep understanding of
material properties and their potential uses. “We have
a great knowledge of materials,” he says. “What we’re
able to do with new customers is take that knowledge
and apply it across different markets. So, a material
application, say that we used in our fiber optic market,
for example, we were able to use in a cosmetic applica-
tion. You would think that they wouldn’t have anything
to do with each other, but those are the type of things -
because of our material knowledge and knowing what
the customer needs - we’re able to cross-pollinate, so
to speak, between different markets and materials.”
“The last area that I think is really important is our ca-
pabilities,” Thompson continues. “We do extrusion in
varying depths, very tight tolerances, a lot of co-extru-
sion, up to seven layers of extrusion. We also do some
