Yes you would want the production one to be steel, just if your trying something out not all the time would you want one made out of steel. Lots of times i have seen things start being made of alum. tested, adjusted, then a production mold made. The cost savings is better if it takes 2-3 cavity or core plate changes to get just what is attended. Now if only I could get one of our sales guys to get his foot in the door.
That makes sense, but it sounds like you'd like their business so you can covertly run some molds of your own -- great idea lol.
The area they really need help in is their plastic pellet supplier -- way too much variance. But that's probably more due to trying to keep costs down by allowing some margin of flexibility in the pellet specs. Dave also said CE plastic was forever dead, that it could not specifically be re-created again. I found that to actually be possible by reverse engineering the specific makeup of the plastic. It's probably not cheap, but it can be done.