The coming new year will see the completion of a plan that Milwaukee-basedMCT Digital has been working on since its inception in 2011, and that’s to manufacture 100 percent of its automated precision cutting systems on U.S. soil.

MCT Digital has been partnering with United Kingdom-based Blackman & White to manufacture its machines, but over the past couple of years the company has been bringing together equipment and engineering talent so that it can make its machines here in the United States.

The recent second round of investment funding the company received will be a big help in that regard, according toSteen Mikkelsen, the company’s CEO. The latest round of funding—at an undisclosed amount—was led by its previous largest outside investor, the Wisconsin Super Angel Fund.

“Basically we are in the middle of finalizing a number of developments,” says Mikkelsen. “We set out to basically start with an almost-white piece of paper and design the next generation of versatile, modular finishing systems that we, with our background and years in business, felt was the right fit for what digital printing would throw at us in the years to come.

“And the funding was helpful, because to get all this put together, we’re spending quite a lot of money on engineering and design and building products. So that’s where that comes in.”

MCT was founded in 2011 by Nikolai Mikkelsen, Steen’s son. But the technology the company’s cutters are based on was actually invented and developed by Steen back when his company was called MGE (Mikkelsen Graphic Engineering). At the time his company was actually a distributor for other companies’ cutters, but Steen Mikkelsen invented and trademarked the camera-based digital die-cutting technology he dubbed i-cut. In 2008, Steen Mikkelsen sold his company to Esko, but he rejoined his son’s company in 2013 after going into semi-retirement because of a non-compete clause when he sold MGE.

Steve Aranoff is MCT Digital’s senior vice president of sales and marketing, and he has known Steen Mikkelsen since the MGE days.

“When we started (MCT Digital) we decided we never again wanted to be just another distributor the way we were back in the 2000-2008 time period,” Aranoff says, referring to the days when MGE was the U.S. distributor—first Zundand then Esko—two companies that MCT Digital now competes against.

“So the idea this time was to develop a next-generation system, and to do it in such a way—even if we used a long-term partner such as Blackman & White in the UK as a design resource—that we wanted to own the engineering drawings and the technology and so we could have the ability to manufacture in Milwaukee.”

When it launched in 2011 MCT Digital’s founders partnered with Blackman & White, a manufacturer they had become aware of during their MGE days.

“Blackman & White is a 50-year-old company that has been a bespoke manufacturer of flatbed cutting tables,” Aranoff says. “The niche that they developed is exactly that—they make bespoke, or totally custom systems—and they basically never met a size they wouldn’t take an order for.”

At the time Blackman & White’s cutters were mainly sold into the sailmaking and aerospace markets, Aranoff says. But the company had a reputation for building solid products and being agile enough to conform to customers’ custom requests, he says.

“Since we had been distributors in the past, we did not feel competent to do the first design of the new system that we had in mind, but we felt very comfortable with the idea of providing a total specification for that product to be executed,” Aranoff says. “And Blackman & White came to realize, at about the same time, that their future as a company really meant that they had to change from a totally bespoke manufacturer to a product-based manufacturer.

“So we went into this 50-50—they developed the initial prototype, and manufactured the first systems for us. Since then we have taken over most of the initial engineering and software development and have moved manufacturing to the point where our machines will be 100 percent manufactured in the United States by the middle of the year. We’re over the hump—we’re now legally made in the U.S.A., and we have other things in process by the first quarter which should allow us to be totally self-reliant by the middle of the year if not sooner.”

MCT Digital’s cutters are marketed under the Versa-Tech and Multi-Tech brand names. Blackman & White also makes flatbed cutters that they market under their own brand names. Even after MCT’s machines are all made in the U.S. a relationship between the two companies will likely continue to exist, although details of that relationship are still being worked out, Steen Mikkelsen says.

MCT Digital sees its position in the marketplace as “small and nimble,” Aranoff says. For example, it’s developed a proprietary conveyor system that he contends no one else is using. The company also makes sure that if customers call with an issue, their call is taken by an actual service technician, not simply a recording. The company also prides itself on the value that customers get from Versa-Tech’s machines compared with its competition.

“So, good value—good monetarily, good technical value, and innovation,” Aranoff says. “And made in America and supported in America.”

MCT Digital employs about 30 people at its headquarters. Its board of directors includes board chairman John Busby, who is also an investor in the Wisconsin Super Angel Fund. Along with the latest funding round MCT also struck up a relationship with Commerce State Bank of West Bend, Wisconsin, that significantly increases the company’s line of credit in order to help it cover inventory and machine building capacity. And as his company grows that should be good for others in the area, Mikkelsen says.

“Milwaukee is a hotspot when it comes to machining and machine or system controls, so there are tool companies near our offices that are either vendors or potential vendors for machine parts, motors, controls and basically everything else that we might need,” he says.

Mikkelsen says he’s excited about his company’s future, given the changes that have come to the finishing industry as digital printing continues to grow in popularity.

“Ten years ago, 12 years ago, when we came out with i-cut, we had to do a lot of missionary work to explain why somebody would need this,” Mikkelsen says. “I’ll never forget—we had a trade show, I think it was 2001—and at the beginning of the show I had extensive conversations with (two large-format printer manufacturers) and both of them said, ‘There’s no need for this contour-cutting technology (i-cut).’ …

“But by the end of that same show everything had changed. Enough customers had seen what we were doing and went back to those big printer vendors and basically said, ‘You guys need to step this up and at least try to cooperate, or integrate with these new automated finishing systems.’ And that was a change—a paradigm change—that occured in just a few days, and that has really continued for these last 10 or 12 years.”