Since 1990, Advanced Food Equipment (AFE), a manufacturer of premium quality cooling and freezing equipment, based in Ridgeway, Pennsylvania with facilities in The Netherlands, has emerged as an industry leader, empowering large commercial food processors to provide their customers with precisely the quality and standards they want.

Evolution of an industry
The cooling and freezing industry traces its origins back to 1820, when British scientist Michael Faraday produced a cooling effect by compressing and liquefying ammonia, and 1876, when German scientist Carl Von Linde finally developed an ammonia-driven system for making ice. But it wasn’t until after World War II that commercial walk-in freezers were introduced, making possible large-scale storage and freezing of perishable foods, gradually replacing traditional ways to preserve such as pickling, salting, and canning. At first, the results were far from perfect, with freezer-burned meat and fruit and vegetables that turned mushy when thawed.

AFE’s founder, Mike Webber, has had a long career in a still-evolving food industry, “with a focus on freezing, working for several different companies before deciding he wanted to start his own,” says Ryan David, AFE’s Director of Sales.

“His experience in the industry, before starting AFE, made him want to do something better because he saw a lot that could be improved in the cooling and freezing sector,” David explains, “From the beginning, the company has emphasized solving the needs of customers, with a focus on hygiene and quality, because Webber wanted to offer equipment that stood above the rest.”

Webber has remained active and involved in AFE, which began as a small family-owned operation and has since grown into a global player. Today, it is led by President Ben Brechtell, who came to the company in the 1990s as part-owner.

And the company’s scope has certainly grown. “We sell, install, and service the food processing equipment we manufacture throughout the U.S. and Canada; in Central and South America; in Europe; and we have some in Saudi Arabia, where an installation is happening now. There’s no geographical limit to where our equipment can be installed,” David says.

Cutting-edge equipment
AFE’s industrial freezers and refrigeration equipment adhere to CSA, USDA, and OSHA standards and exceed industry standards for health and cleanliness. They are carefully crafted from stainless steel, eliminating any joints or crevices that could trap food particles and thus inhibiting bacterial growth. The equipment also has HTST (high temperature short time) pasteurization capabilities.

“We work with several entities, including the American Meat Institute, who have come to our facility and evaluated our equipment from a hygienic and sanitary point of view, and they rated ours as the most hygienic they have ever inspected,” says David. “We want to make sure that food-related disasters don’t happen, and we’re proud that our ratings are so high. It’s something we hang our hats on, and we constantly look for ways to improve.”

Food processors in all sectors (beef, poultry, and pork; seafood; fruit and vegetable; pizza and pasta; dairy products; baked goods; potatoes, fries, and chips; and more) can choose from a wide range of applications to suit their specific needs.

Spiral freezers, designed for faster freezing and lower energy consumption, are available in three formats: the Packaged Spiral Freezer, which is available in single to multiple pieces that can be installed in days instead of weeks; the External Spiral Freezer, which is completely built offsite, and attached to the exterior of the facility with no special foundation or roofing requirements; and Site-built Spirals.

This latter solution is offered for installations where modular sections cannot be utilized and incorporates the same design methods. Also within the spiral family are Spiral Steamers, with varying cooking capabilities, and Spiral Coolers, providing ambient or conditioned cooling environments ideal for sensitive food products.

AFE’s IQF (individual quick freeze) Tunnel Freezers, including Belt Tunnel Freezers and Hybrid Tunnel Freezers, can handle a wide range of processes, and are ideal for processing small meat products as well as many varieties of fruits and vegetables.

The company’s Contact Belt Freezers, meanwhile, provide fast freezing times with minimal hydration, making them ideal for products like raw meat, seafood, candies, baby food, dairy products, fruit processing, and ready-to-eat meals.

Also available are energy-saving Multilevel Box Freezers, Plate Freezers—a thermally effective solution for food in packages or trays—and Blast Freezers. The AFE-30, the high-capacity, centrifugal evaporator fan on these freezers, draws air through the load to ensure even temperatures and is ideal for high-volume food preservation.

In addition to the cooling and freezing equipment, AFE manufactures Shakers, which are used for sorting products by dimension and length, aiming or orienting products, de-watering, de-fatting or degreasing of products, spreading or singling, sieving, grading, or dosing.

Efficiency and the environment
AFE’s engineers have implemented design features that are beneficial for customers, end users, and the environment.

The sequential defrost feature, for example, can save up to 30 percent in energy costs. As David explains, a freezer could have 10 coils or evaporators, manufactured from aluminum and magnesium to make them corrosion resistant, a concern because they change temperature often and can only run for so long.

To protect their life span, AFE’s design allows for one coil at a time to be isolated from the enclosure and shut down while it is defrosted, resulting in no lost production because the other coils are designed to handle the full capacity while one is out. This allows the freezer to operate for much longer periods.

With regards to cleaning, AFE has designed a CIP (clean in place) system, engineered to clean a very large area in a short time. It uses less water and detergent, ensures hygiene, reduces downtime and overall operating costs, and extends the life of the equipment.

The good news for any commercial food processing company is that they needn’t be an AFE customer to take advantage of this top-flight cleaning system, because AFE technicians can install an engineered retrofit CIP package into an existing Spiral Freezer or IQF Tunnel system from another manufacturer.

Reliable and timely service
AFE works with teams of service technicians located strategically throughout North and South America, managed centrally from its Ridgeway, Pennsylvania office, who carry out preventative maintenance as well as quarterly, biannual, or annual inspections and on-site freezing and chilling testing to ensure equipment is running optimally.

“But, much as we try to prevent issues arising, things come up that we need to respond to quickly,” David shares. “We recognize that time is money, especially in the food industry, so if a freezer is not working, it’s not making money for our client. We pride ourselves on quick response times, finding solutions, and being in constant communication with our customers to make sure we know what their needs are,” he says.

“There’s a misconception in the industry that AFE is typically more expensive than our competition, but if potential customers compare our equipment with our competition and review the value-added options we offer—the hygiene and the longer run times—then there’s no comparison,” he continues. In actuality, “AFE is less expensive because we offer more value in the long term. Return on investment is a big point of reference, and I like to point that out. As we move into the future, companies are paying more attention to hygiene and efficiency and longer run times. We see those trends happening now and we’re taking steps, using the newest technologies to run our freezers even more efficiently with longer run times so our clients can be even more profitable.”

On a personal note, he calls AFE “a great company to work for. With all the talk about food security, I take pride in being part of the process that can provide clean, safe, good-tasting food to the world,” he says. “One of the things that can get lost in the shuffle while we talk about the huge pieces of steel equipment we sell and install is that this equipment has a real impact on individual lives. I am happy to be working for a company that believes food security on a global scale is paramount.”

The post At AFE, Freezing Technology is Heating Up<p class="company">Advanced Food Equipment</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

In the manufacturing sector, many industry leaders are doing their part to manage and reduce these emissions and the challenges and threats they pose.

Globally, the manufacturing sector accounts for 12.7 percent of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions directly from its processes (not from its energy use), according to a December 2024 report issued by the World Resource Institute.

While the largest proportion of GHG emissions by far is composed of carbon dioxide (CO₂), GHG emissions also include trace amounts of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases), used in the manufacture of heating and cooling products, electric power transmitters, and electronics. Meanwhile, the demand for manufactured products—products which rely in some way on iron and steel production, which contribute 4.5 percent of GHG emissions, and on concrete, which contributes a further 3.4 percent of GHG emissions—continues to grow exponentially, as emerging economies strive to match those of more developed nations.

Creating a greener steel
Steel contributes to emissions both directly through its processes which rely on coal and through its use of fossil fuels to achieve the extremely high heat levels required to transform iron into steel. But it is certainly impossible to imagine the modern world without steel—no large buildings or skyscrapers; no cars, trains, planes, or ships; no bridges; no machinery to manufacture anything else; and ironically, no wind turbines or solar energy arrays to provide green energy, because they too require steel to support them.

To decrease its emissions, the industry is considering a multi-pronged approach to solve a complex problem, including recycling scrap metal, adopting a hydrogen-based reduction process to produce iron, implementing carbon capture and storage technology on existing blast furnaces, optimizing energy efficiency, digitizing monitoring equipment to stay better informed about what is happening, and switching to renewable energy sources to power operations.

“Hydrogen-based direct reduction (HyDR) is a major contender for the future of green ironmaking without a direct release of CO₂ emissions,” according to a paper published by the Max Planck Institute for Sustainable Materials. This process “relies on a multistep solid-gas reaction, where iron ore in pellet or powder form is subjected to elevated temperatures under a reducing gas atmosphere.”

There is, however, a trade-off to the use of this new technology, because “the fragmented sponge iron coming out of the HyDR process needs to be molten in order to be processed into various steel alloys. This is typically performed in an electric arc furnace (EAF), resulting in a major energy penalty.” CCUS technologies (Carbon Capture, Use, and Storage or Carbon Capture, Utilization, and Sequestration) are thus considered highly effective solutions for reducing carbon emissions in the industry.

According to an article updated in May 2024 by Global Energy Monitor, CCUS technology has multiple advantages including the fact that it can be used to retrofit existing plants to deal with the CO₂, along with co-product gases including methane. However, instead of allowing these gases to enter the atmosphere, CCUS technologies separate and capture the CO₂ generated during the iron and steelmaking process, which can be safely and permanently stored underground or chemically converted into other products such as plastics, concrete, or biofuel.

It has even been used in enhanced oil recovery, as has been done by the Abu Dhabi National Oil Company, since 2016, using sequestered CO₂ from its Emirates Steel plant. The CO₂ remains permanently sequestered in the geologic formation where the oil was trapped.

Concrete benefits from CCUS technology
Within the manufacturing sector, concrete is also a significant contributor to GHG emissions, but its carbon footprint can be reduced with CO₂ utilization technologies that go beyond carbon capture. In Canada, Nova Scotia’s CarbonCure Technologies Inc. provides a system that integrates waste CO₂ into fresh concrete, and in a series of chemical reactions known as carbonization, the injected CO₂ becomes permanently embedded in precast concrete during the curing process, reducing the amount of cement required.

Another company, CarbiCrete, based in Montreal, uses carbonation activation to replace cement entirely by using ground steel slag, a by-product of steel production. Since no cement is required, the emissions associated with cement production are eliminated and the concrete produced with this technology is carbon negative. The technologies developed by these two companies have been adopted successfully by concrete plants in Ontario and Alberta since 2015.

A January 2025 article published by Natural Resources Canada suggests that “if the majority of brick and concrete block plants in North America implemented CO₂ carbonation, CO₂ emissions could be reduced by 2.5 percent annually.”

What about those F-gases?
As mentioned, GHG emissions also include trace amounts of fluorinated greenhouse gases (F-gases), which can enter the atmosphere when they are produced, transported, stored, or filled into products such a refrigeration equipment, heat pumps, air conditioners, and electronics or released directly into the air though aerosols and solvents.

Among these gases are hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs, which represent 90 percent of the total of F-gases), perfluorocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride. Their total amount is small, but “their impact is often thousands of times higher than that of CO₂,” according to a report released by the European Parliament. “These manmade substances were initially introduced in the 1990s to replace ozone-depleting substances (ODS) but were found to trap heat from the sun and make the planet warm up even faster than CO₂.”

It seems that the cure was worse than the disease, because not only is their impact higher than that of CO₂, F-gases remain in the atmosphere much longer. By 2012, Europeans were sounding the alarm. The European Parliament and the Council of the European Union has taken the lead to regulate these gases, beginning with the 2014 F-gas Regulation, and in February 2024 with the F-Gas Regulation (EU) 2024/573, which seeks to phase out HFCs by 2050.

Manufacturers making an impact
Shortly after his second inauguration on January 20, 2025, President Trump signed an executive order entitled “Putting America First in International Environmental Agreements” to withdraw the U.S. from the Paris Agreement, which seeks to reduce carbon levels to net zero by 2050. He had also withdrawn from the agreement in his first term, with the U.S. rejoining in 2020 following an executive order signed by President Biden.

While the Paris Agreement’s goals are lofty, and may not be reached by 2050, we are impressed by the corporate responsibility of manufacturers in both the U.S. and Canada, the latter of whom is a signatory to the agreement. Over and over, these manufacturers have proudly told us how they are working to reduce their GHG emissions, either through innovative processes or through products which will assist their customers in reducing emissions.

In this issue, we speak with Michigan Sugar Company’s President and CEO, Neil Juhnke, who told us that, since 2002, when it became a grower-owned cooperative, the company has cut its energy consumption by more than 40 percent and achieved a total reduction in annual carbon emissions of 150,000 tons. It has also invested in new technology to ensure zero waste from production is going into landfill and in research to produce higher quality seed. This has doubled the size of the sugar beet crop and significantly increased its sugar content without requiring additional acreage and additional passes by agriculture equipment.

In July of last year, Hernán Dominguez, Vice President of Sales at Hazard Control Technologies, based in Fayetteville, Georgia, told us how the company had invested heavily to develop the F-500 Encapsulator Agent, which is revolutionizing industrial fire-fighting technology. These fires, including slow burning fires in scrapyards and recycling plants, can wreak atmospheric havoc, releasing toxic smoke from various metal alloys, rubber tires, plastics, and lithium batteries, which this patented product can extinguish when water and traditional foam cannot.

In April 2024, we spoke with Andrew Mutch, President of Michelin North America (Canada) headquartered in New Glasgow, Nova Scotia, about Michelin’s Greener Freight Program and how its Canadian plant as well as ones in the U.S. have invested in technology to reduce the rolling resistance of tires used on transport trucks. This is critically important, because the higher the resistance of the tire, the greater the strain on the combustion engine, with more diesel fuel consumed to overcome it, resulting in higher levels of emissions. By 2028, he estimated that the 93 fleets involved with this program will have saved 159,000 tons of CO₂. The company has also invested $300 million in a Green Mobility Plan to modernize its Nova Scotia plants, and formed a joint venture with another company to explore uses for hydrogen fuel cells capable of powering a vehicle.

There are countless examples of what the manufacturing industry is doing to significantly reduce, and hopefully eliminate, GHG emissions in the decades to come. These three serve to illustrate the innovative ways manufacturing companies, ranging from a grower-owned cooperative to a mid-size, niche business, to a huge multi-national—all manufacturing vastly different products—are working to bring about positive change.

The post How Manufacturing is Cutting Carbon<p class="company">Managing Emissions in Manufacturing </p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

The company’s roots go back to 1906, when six smaller sugar companies merged operations. Nearly a century later, in 2002, it became a grower-owned cooperative, and two years later, in 2004, merged with Monitor Sugar Company.

Today, approximately 865 grower-owners in counties throughout Michigan and Ontario plant and harvest about 140,000 acres of sugar beets. They are sliced in the factories and turned into 1.3 billion pounds of sugar annually, which is sold under the Pioneer brand in various forms ranging from granulated and powdered sugars to liquid and brown sugars. These products find their way to retail and food service providers, as well as multi-national food processors. Co-products, including pulp, molasses, betaine, and raffinate, are used as animal feed supplements, so there is zero waste in the company’s operations.

The third largest of eight sugar beet processing companies in the U.S., Michigan Sugar Company is an important economic driver for the region. It has 1,000 year-round employees and an additional 1,100 seasonal workers, who may work up to nine months a year, with an annual payroll of nearly $90 million, making it one of the largest employers in the Great Lakes Bay and Thumb regions of Michigan. The company’s annual local economic impact is more than $700 million.

To learn more, we spoke with President and CEO Neil Juhnke, who joined the company in April 2023, bringing with him a wealth of experience in the agribusiness sector stretching back to 1990, when he began working for the American Crystal Sugar Company. We also spoke with Rob Clark, Senior Director of Communications and Community Relations, who joined the company eight years ago and worked through the pandemic.

“Our employees were deemed essential, as sugar is an important food product for consumers,” Clark explains. “The sugar industry rose to the challenge and the store shelves never lacked sugar, even when there were other shortages.”

The power of cooperative problem solving
When the pine lumber barons departed from the Saginaw Valley in the 1880s, they left behind huge tracts of stump-filled land, making the area virtually unusable, leading state and local leaders to search for a solution that would form a sustainable, economic base.

Enter the sugar beet.

Joseph Seemann, a Saginaw Valley printer who had travelled to Europe in 1884, observed how well sugar beets were growing there, and returned with seed samples, which he showed to Dr. Robert Kedzie, a chemistry professor at the Michigan State Agriculture College (now Michigan State University). Kedzie expressed great enthusiasm for the prospect of sugar beet farming in Michigan.

“Three crops of beets,” he is recorded as saying, “grown in three successive years, are worth as much as one crop of pine trees which took 100 years to mature.”

In 1887, the industry got its official start when the state legislature passed a bill offering sugar beet processors a bounty of one cent per pound of sugar, providing the farmers received four dollars per ton of beets yielding 12 percent sugar content.

Over the next century, there was tremendous growth in the industry, with sugar beets accounting for 52 percent of the sugar used in the U.S., along with a complex series of company mergers and acquisitions, some beneficial for Michigan Sugar and some, as it turned out, not so much. In 2001, Michigan Sugar’s parent company, Imperial Sugar, was unable to pay its debts and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, which could have spelled the end of Michigan Sugar.

Becoming a grower-owned cooperative
However, as it turned out, 2001 was by no means an end.

“The best story about our company happened in 2002, when our growers bought it,” says Juhnke. “They literally saved the industry in the state of Michigan through their courage, foresight, vision, and faith, which will help us to carry on for generations to come.”

Under new management and with a board of directors comprising grower-owners, Michigan Sugar has made impressive strides forward in the industry.

The company has continued to work with agricultural researchers at Michigan State University, which first championed the industry in 1884; the University of Guelph in Ontario; and in its own internal research department, to develop seeds that will result in improved crops—both in quality and quantity—while reducing its carbon footprint.

“20 years ago, a grower could harvest about 20 tons per acre, with beets containing 15 percent sugar, whereas today, a grower can see a 40-ton crop with 18 percent sugar content,” Clark explains. “Of course, with 865 shareholders, the numbers vary each year based on a variety of factors, including the seed variety planted, field soil type, weather conditions during the growing season, and how well a grower can manage disease and pest pressures.”

Using GMO seed has allowed growers to increase yields by 50 percent while reducing the number of passes made across fields by 65 percent during the last 10 years, further reducing carbon emissions from agricultural equipment. Since 2002, the company has in fact cut its energy consumption by 40 percent and achieved a total reduction in annual carbon emissions of 150,000 tons. More than 87 percent of factory operations are now powered by clean-burning natural gas.

Planning ahead
When Juhnke took over the reins as President and CEO, he was faced with a demographic challenge, as the company was losing its most experienced and talented factory employees to retirement. To deal with this situation, the team reset its priorities, focusing on rebuilding assets and investing in training new workers in the rather arcane and difficult systems behind sugar beet processing, he tells us.

“We have a management trainee system for new graduates, with tuition reimbursement and apprenticeship programs for instrument technicians, electricians, welders, and mechanics, with associated costs covered by the company,” Juhnke says. “Our business is not amenable to automation; we require people to make sugar, and people are our greatest asset. We also needed a capital-focused strategy and reinvestment in our factories to improve processing performance through the introduction of state-of-the-art technology, while at the same time reducing our environmental impact.”

As part of that strategy, the company has implemented a quality-based payment system that modifies the formula by which grower shareholders are paid, incentivizing them to produce a higher sugar, higher purity crop which ultimately improves sugar recovery and factory performance, and reduces the amount of land and fertilizer needed by the farmers.

Making crystalized sugar
After the autumn harvest, the sugar beets that were planted by farm families in the spring are transported to the factories, where any stones that may have been mixed in with the beets are separated. The beets are then washed and fed into a machine that slices them into long skinny pieces called “cossettes” that resemble shoestring cut potatoes. These are perfect for extracting sugar from the beet—which is approximately 76 percent water—through a diffusion and filtering process, leaving behind pulp, which makes up 5.5 percent of the beet’s content, and other co-products.

The juice from the purification step is quite thin, containing a fair amount of water. This is removed by boiling it off until it becomes thicker and is then moved through an evaporation process, where it becomes thick enough for crystals to form.

The crystalized sugar is then spun at high speeds in a centrifuge machine, removing molasses—which makes up about 2.5 percent of the beet—that did not crystalize. Next, the damp sugar tumbles through hot, filtered air to dry, and is cooled, conditioned, and stored in a silo awaiting packaging and distribution.

Molasses desugaring technology
“We have continually modernized the technology in our factories,” Juhnke explains, “and most recently we invested in a strategic project called molasses desugaring technology.”

The new molasses desugaring facility, which opened in Bay City in May 2024 at a cost of $109 million, represents the largest single capital investment made by the company since 1906 and allows it to process 100 percent of the molasses it produces during the sugar extraction process.

The company had been using an older version of this technology developed 30 years ago, “but this fourth-generation technology is a completely sustainable technology and functions at a molecular level, so we are able to separate the components of molasses that are not sugar from sucrose, and ultimately produce a syrup extract that is between 92 and 94 percent pure, from which we can crystalize table sugar,” Juhnke shares.

“This increased our whole recovery of sugar from percentages in the low 80s to the mid-90s, meaning that we can now recover more than 90 percent of the sugar from the beets as a food-grade product, while the remaining molasses is used in the cattle and fermentation industries.”

This investment is hugely significant. From an economic standpoint, it is projected that over a 10-year period, grower-owners will see significant added revenue annually, while from an environmental standpoint, it will allow the company to produce up to 80 million more pounds of sugar annually without planting another acre of sugar beets.

Smart co-products mean zero waste
Michigan Sugar Company’s co-products include pressed pulp, a key ingredient in livestock rations, especially for dairy and beef cattle, and dried pulp. This is a nutritious and absorptive feed for cattle and horses, as well as poultry, elk, swine, and pet food, available in shreds or pellets.

Another by-product, betaine, an amino acid, is an excellent supplement in broiler nutrition, helping birds reduce stress while improving meat production.

Raffinate, known as “beet juice,” is yet another by-product that enhances livestock feed as it is a good source of protein. It is surprisingly versatile and can also be used as a de-icing agent on roads, as a more environmentally friendly alternative to road salt.

Making life sweeter for the community
Michigan Sugar’s board of directors and management remains cognizant that the company is one of the largest single employers in the region and is therefore committed to helping its extended community thrive. Annually, the company donates more than 100,000 pounds of Pioneer Sugar to charitable organizations, food pantries, and churches, sponsors county fairs and community festivals in multiple counties and supports festivals in many towns. Each year, the company also funds more than a dozen academic scholarships valued at more than $15,000. This includes three scholarships offered through the Michigan Sugar Queen Scholarship program.

The company also led an effort to develop the Aunt Sugar’s Farm and Uncle Pickle’s Barn Gallery at the Mid-Michigan Children’s Museum in Saginaw, and in 2021, renewed a commitment to upgrade it. The team also partners with the Saginaw Basin Land Conservancy to maintain the Michigan Sugar Trails, a series of single-track, natural surface hiking and biking trails located on 26 acres of land in Bay City.

In addition, Michigan Sugar Company is a United Way Campaign Champion, with the company and its employees annually donating tens of thousands of dollars to support local nonprofit organizations.

“We make a concerted effort to be credible community partners,” Juhnke says, “through corporate philanthropy, through donations of product, money, and time. Many of our employees offer hands-on, thoughtful leadership, serving on boards of other organizations, and we encourage that,” he tells us.

“We’re very proud our cooperative is owned by farm families in Michigan and Ontario, and proud that we produce and package our sugar, an all-natural product, here in the U.S.”

The post The Sweet Life of a Successful Grower-Owned Cooperative<p class="company">Michigan Sugar Company</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Radius offers 24-hour fire alarm and sprinkler monitoring services along with a command centre staffed day and night, seven days a week, by certified fire personnel who are dedicated to keeping industrial, commercial, and multi-family residential facilities—and the people who live and work in them—safe.

Radius differs from other fire protection companies in that it doesn’t subcontract its monitoring services. If there is an issue with monitoring equipment or a fire alarm, Radius customers can call a single number for a certified Radius technician to tackle any issue immediately, protecting life and assets.

Protection from the very start
Another aspect that sets Radius apart is its fire safety division’s approach to new building projects, an approach encompassing the entire life cycle of the building, beginning in the construction phase. Radius provides security on the job site, plans fire escape routes and signage, and assists with choosing from among the different types of fire suppression systems—water, foam, dry chemicals, inert gas, or other chemicals, ensuring that what is chosen and installed fits the complex needs of the project, whether manufacturing plant, refinery, or multi-story office tower.

Employing the latest smart technology, professionals will install the alarm, sprinkler, suppression, monitoring, and emergency light systems; carry out annual inspections; review the fire safety plan if the building undergoes renovations; and modify this plan accordingly. Over time, Radius will repair equipment as needed and update it should fire code regulations change.

“From the day the shovel hits the dirt to the installation of equipment and development and review of fire safety plans, we are there every step of the way providing our customers with professional services,” says Dave Baxter, partner and director of Business Development.

Radius runs in the family
In 1948, Ed Boheme founded a fire protection company in the southern mainland of B.C. with what the company describes as “a half-ton truck and a ton of gumption.”

Baxter explains that “In the 1970s, my grandfather moved from Manitoba to B.C., purchased the company, which then had five or six employees, and ran it for 15 years. Then my father took over as president, ran it with my aunt, and built it significantly to over 100 employees.”

In the 1980s, a sister company, Radius Security, was formed, with locations in Calgary, Alberta and Dallas, Texas which focused on security, burglar intrusion, and home monitoring stations, and which we featured in our July 2021 edition.

In 2021, Mike Baxter, Dave’s brother, took over as president of The Radius Group, (which includes Radius Fire Protection and Radius Security), making it a third-generation Baxter family-owned and operated company. The business has continued to grow, with over 250 employees, a fleet of vehicles, and thousands of satisfied customers.

In 2023, the company won Richmond, B.C.’s award for Best Large Business after a thorough review of its management and employees by Chamber of Commerce representatives. “Our next goal is to be the best business in B.C.,” says Baxter.

Despite its growth and success, the company maintains a family atmosphere and cares about its employees, says Baxter. “We focus on new employees to make sure they are welcomed, but also on our long-time employees, and we observe their milestone events. We provide intensive training, and our employees know they have a career trajectory here because we have implemented a variety of internal training programs.”

Another thing that differentiates Radius is its culture. “Because we’re authorized to train people, we can hire based on attitude, meaning we hire people we know will get along with our team. Our culture includes our Radius ‘DNA – 30’ fundamentals that we rotate weekly and discuss at the start of our meetings for five or ten minutes,” Baxter explains. “This week, for example, we’re talking about how to practice blameless problem solving and discuss how we’re all going to live that DNA throughout the week,” he says.

“It’s about leading by example, and we’ve seen that DNA and those fundamental principles have a transformative effect on our company. People who feel they don’t fit in here can self-select out if it’s not working for them, and that’s ok. We have our fundamentals we’ve chosen to live by, and they work for us and our customers.”

Authorized fire technician training
Radius Fire Protection is the only fire protection company in B.C. authorized by the Applied Science Technologies and Technicians of B.C. (ASTTBC) to train Fire Protection Technicians. This means that Radius alone in B.C. can offer in-house training courses for the “Fundamental Six” (Fire Alarm, Sprinkler, Emergency Lights, Extinguishers, Electronics, and ASTTBC Code of Ethics) while at the same time inculcating the values expressed in the Radius DNA program.

Certification assures customers that their fire protection needs are in capable hands and that the technicians possess the skills and knowledge to perform critical fire protection and life safety services, including inspection and testing of various systems.

Baxter tells us that there are schools that offer such courses, but the classes tend to be theory-based, with the student technicians only gaining practical experience through on-the-job training. Unfortunately, this presents the real possibility of critical mistakes being made that could severely compromise the customer’s installation or testing protocols.

By contrast, he says, Radius Fire Protection “offers a controlled environment where students can learn without putting actual clients in jeopardy. We take students and get them to build a fire alarm system, troubleshoot it, and show us how the testing is done, and it is far more in-depth than any other course available. They spend half the day studying theory, which is a prerequisite for certification, and the other half putting the theory into practice in our facility, where they can’t damage a client’s assets,” he explains.

“What this does is give our customers confidence about what our technicians have learned and that they’ve made their mistakes in our facility and not in theirs. When our technicians go into a customer’s building, they know what they’re doing and they can work in the field mistake-free.”

An added benefit of Radius’ approach to education and training is its small class size, with no more than four trainees at a time, which leads to greater student engagement. “It’s the only school I’ve ever seen where students show up an hour early and stay an hour late because they’re so eager to learn,” Baxter shares.

In addition, student certification with ASTTBC is not a one-off achievement; registration must be renewed annually, demonstrating a commitment to staying current with industry standards and practices through the ongoing training Radius makes available to its technicians.

Supporting the community
By its very nature, Radius Fire Protection supports the community it serves, fulfilling what psychologist Abraham Maslow considered the most basic of human needs, that of safety and security, without which people and their enterprises cannot grow and prosper.

As a member of the National Fire Protection Association, Radius takes its responsibility to that organization, to the ASTTBC, and to its customers, seriously. But beyond that, Radius Fire Protection reaches out to the community by making donations to the B.C. Professional Fire Fighters Burn Fund, founded in 1978. Each year, approximately 1,000 children and adults are treated for burn injuries in B.C. and the Yukon, and the Burn Fund assists with their recovery.

Burn Fund operations include the Home Away Centre located in downtown Vancouver, which offers burn and trauma survivors and their families—including firefighters—accommodation while receiving medical treatment if they must travel more than 100 kilometres to access it. Burn Fund also offers camps and retreats for families and individuals of all ages.

Meanwhile, Radius Fire Protection’s sister group, Radius Security, supports the Pacific Community Resource Society. Since 1984, this organization has been providing social services across B.C. related to education, employment, housing, substance abuse, mental health, and youth and family support services. The organization’s Youth Hubs offer drop-in support, access to food, programming, and life skills development. “Protecting our community is central to what we do,” Baxter says. “It is all-encompassing.”

Indeed, Radius Fire Protection’s dedication to safety, training, and community service makes it a leader in the fire protection industry. From its comprehensive, in-house technician training to its commitment to smart technology and full-service fire monitoring, Radius sets the standard for excellence. Rooted in family values and guided by a strong company culture, it continues to grow while staying true to its mission of protecting lives and property. And with a deep sense of responsibility to its customers and the broader community, Radius Fire Protection is more than just a service provider—it’s a trusted partner in safety, today and for generations to come.

The post Protecting People and Property<p class="company">Radius Fire Protection</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

In our November 2024 issue, we shared the story of Franchino Mold & Engineering of Lansing, Michigan, which got its humble start in 1955 in a 20’ x 20’ garage owned by Richard Franchino. Today it’s an industry leader in the custom design and engineering of medium to large die cast dies and thermoplastic injection molds, serving manufacturing customers across the nation and around the globe in aerospace, construction, consumer goods, and other sectors.

A month earlier, in our October 2024 issue, we told you about Crystal Sensations of Markham, Ontario, whose beginnings go back to 1990 when company founder and owner Miles Bocknek, working out of his home, began marketing coffee table books to corporate clients in the Greater Toronto Area. Today, the company is a design studio and manufacturer specializing in corporate giftware and awards, using sophisticated subsurface 3D laser engraving technology to serve over 5,000 clients.

These stories and others like them are inspirational but raise the question: can their successes be replicated in the 21^st century, which saw a recession in 2008, two years of lockdowns, supply chain interruptions, and massive inflation?

We don’t think it is by any means easy to do, but we do wish to highlight Bathurst, New Brunswick’s ThermalWood Canada, featured in our December 2024 issue, which did beat the odds when it opened in 2008, “when there couldn’t have been a worse time to start a business,” as founder and co-owner Robert Lennon told us.

The business model Lennon and his brother-in-law, Pierre Friolet, had developed over three years involved providing a service for wood product manufacturers by thermally treating their hardwood lumber to create a stable, mold- and insect-resistant product suitable for external use. But during the recession, North American manufacturers were not interested, which forced ThermalWood to change its model, and both treat the wood and manufacture product—such as decking and siding—as well as shift the sales target to Europe.

Fast forward to 2020, when Lennon heard about the difficulty luthiers were experiencing in sourcing good quality black ebony wood prized for guitar necks. ThermalWood took advantage of the slowdown created by the pandemic to develop an alternative for ebony using maple, which, under the name Obsidian Ebony, has been industry-tested, gained favourable reviews, and opened a niche market in the music industry.

The outlook for small manufacturing entrepreneurs in 2025 and beyond
It could be said that for small manufacturing entrepreneurs these are “the best of times and the worst of times,” with failure rates up to 51 percent within the first five years of operation in both Canada and the U.S.

Both countries are dealing with sky-high inflation, tariffs and possible retaliatory tariffs, and supply chain interruptions. Added to that volatile mix are ongoing conflicts impacting the global economy, a rapidly changing climate, and the need to meet carbon emission reduction targets as per international agreements. One of those factors alone could be enough to shut down a business.

Yet there are lessons to be learned from the 49 percent who do succeed which are both inspirational and instructional, and as important now as they were in the past—lessons about controlled growth, market research, and a nimble response to changing market conditions.

Richard Franchino, for example, allowed his business to grow slowly, developing a solid local client base before expanding. Miles Bocknek knew he had a winning product as he had distributed the crystal awards to corporate clients who loved them but found shipping costs prohibitive. That experience gave him the confidence to invest his own money to acquire the technology to manufacture them. For three years, while Lennon developed ThermalWood Canada, he continued working in his previous job, not taking a salary from the new company, and when faced with roadblocks, he pivoted.

Not only is it possible for small manufacturing entrepreneurs to succeed, but given the geopolitical conditions North Americans face in the second quarter of the 21^st century, it is imperative for our nations that we become self-sufficient. At the same time, we need solutions to solve the climate crisis, and these two needs combined—self-sufficiency and environmental solutions—represent opportunities in the innovation economy.

But while entrepreneurs look to help solve these issues, who is helping them get started?

Where solutions incubate and hatch
According to the Business Development Bank of Canada, incubators play an important role and can support start-ups in various stages of development. With support through their first two years, start-ups have a better than average five-year success rate when they do fly solo.

Incubators often operate in cutting-edge, advanced technology sectors and may share space and logistical and technical resources, which enable fledgling companies to develop and test their offerings at a lower cost before starting production. There are also local economic development incubators that support a wider variety of businesses, since their focus is on job creation and regional revitalization.

We feature one such incubator (see Entering a New Energy Era) in our February 2025 issue of Business in Focus, and found that Gord More, Executive Director of the Southeast Techhub (SETH) in Estevan, Saskatchewan so insightful we wanted to hear more from him.

“If you look at our world—politically, socially, economically—you’ll see it is driven by innovation. If you look at ancient cultures, the Greeks and the Romans, you’ll see they too had innovative ideas and ways of doing things, and then they didn’t, and that’s when they stopped being leaders,” More says.

“To be successful in the current market, you need to be on top of innovation, but big corporations are slow and find it difficult to make changes. They are controlled by regulations, liabilities, and earning a profit for shareholders, so they are not willing to take a risk. This is why we need the innovators and the disruptors to be backed up and supported.”

Southeast Techhub (SETH) and the Innovation Centre for Energy Development (ICED)
SETH, which opened in May 2022, was created by the City of Estevan, in southeast Saskatchewan, with support from the provincial and federal governments. It is a registered, incorporated, non-profit organization that acts as a collaboration hub with a mission to inspire and nurture the growth of innovative and technology-based companies in the region, which will eventually lead to the manufacture of small and large products.

Currently, it is functioning in two ways, serving its biggest client, Estevan itself, with a major project, while also working with 20 small manufacturing entrepreneurs who are in varying stages of development, and who More has taken through a sequence of steps starting with an investigation to see if their project ideas would work in real-life situations.

He assists in developing a business plan, connects them with resources, explains what they need to know about patenting their idea as intellectual property, may refer them to the local college if there are skills they need, mentors them, and helps them understand financing.

Projects in advanced stages—with some even having a few customers—include a methane sensing drone, which is flying over oil fields in Saskatchewan and Alberta; a new type of water purification system, which tested successfully on the effluent from a meat packing plant and is now being built in Estevan, with several municipalities interested; and a new type of wind turbine. The latter’s prototype is complete, government funding is in place, and it is now in the applied research stage at a university which is building a life-size prototype to test.

Another project involves a software system currently under development by a Métis artist assisted by students in a computer science projects training program at Southeast College. The system will assist in the application of traditional beadwork patterns, which the artist learned from Elders and which can be used in the manufacture of various items. “I have been helping her to find a market and she recently did a presentation with some government and businesspeople in Saskatoon, and she was so happy,” says More.

Meanwhile, the community is using the tech incubator to find a solution to a serious problem it will face in five years, when the coal mines, Estevan’s economic driver for 150 years, will be forced to end production unless a use for coal other than as a fossil fuel can be found. As More explains, “Our coal is different from that found in other parts of the country. It is prehistoric peat that has been barely fossilized and still has its original organic structure. Under a microscope it has the same structure as graphite.”

Graphite is widely used in industrial lubricants, in the core of nuclear reactors, and in the rods to control the reaction. This is significant as there is great interest in the manufacture of small modular reactors (SMRs) for power generation, but there are hurdles to their manufacture, with China controlling 77 percent of the world’s graphite. Currently, SETH is working on a project to convert the coal to graphite with applied researchers at The George Washington University, and on another project with the University of Chicago to convert coal to green hydrogen which could then be used for powering agricultural equipment or drones.

Last year, SETH partnered with Southeast College’s Centre of Sustainable Innovation to create the Innovation Centre for Energy Development (ICED), “an ecosystem where applied research or product development projects could be completed.” This in turn will lead to projects being commercialized and manufactured, creating new industries and new opportunities for small entrepreneurs.

Included in the plans for a fully operational ICED are a hydrogen hub, a solar-powered data centre, an organic chemistry lab, and a microgrid that would allow energy projects to tie into other projects to mimic a real-world environment, in a climate that fluctuates from +40° C to -40° C. “But we need private investors to bring these projects to fruition,” says More. “We are receiving government funding, but private investors bring understanding and knowledge of the markets they work in, and we need that to make these projects successful.”

The rural mindset—innovation connection
People may think that all the disruption is taking place in large centres, but that is not the case. More points to a study conducted at Stanford University using AI to reinterpret congressional floor debates, major corporations’ quarterly reports, and sales reports over the last 50 years, which asked, ‘when was the first time this idea was shown; where did those ideas come from?’ “This showed that innovation doesn’t happen in the big urban areas and instead happens with the outsiders, the disruptors, with us on the outside, as we have to be innovative to survive.”

He describes the rural mindset—how a farmer, when faced with a malfunctioning piece of equipment at harvest time, will improvise a way to repair it rather than sacrifice a day’s work by taking it to the nearest centre hours away. Dr. Eric Grimson, More says, who hails from Estevan and is now a senior officer and faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a recent guest speaker at a SETH event, “told us that if he had to choose between two students, one from an urban centre whose parents both had PhDs and another with the same test scores from a rural area, he would take the rural student. That kid grew up with challenges and is able to disrupt,” More shares, paraphrasing Dr. Grimson. “When you disrupt, people get mad at you, and you have to be willing to get smacked down and get back up when you fail or when what you created doesn’t work, and try again. That doesn’t always exist in the city, but that is everyday life in rural areas. It is how you survive,” he says.

“I think if we can get rural tech hubs and incubators going across North America, supporting small manufacturing entrepreneurs, it would really drive our economy forward.”

The post Made in North America<p class="company">Starting Small and Making It Big in Manufacturing</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

But that was then, and this is now. Since 2008, ThermalWood Canada, a thermally modified wood manufacturer based in Bathurst, New Brunswick, on Canada’s east coast, has been offering construction customers around the globe finished hardwood products—and more recently, wood products for the music industry—all manufactured through a carefully timed process of heat and steam, with temperatures ranging between 185 and 215°C.

This process changes the physical properties of the wood and, without using chemicals harmful to the environment, creates a stable, durable, mold- and insect-resistant, environmentally friendly, and aesthetically attractive product. It is, quite literally, the wood of the future.

Back to the beginning
Robert Lennon, President and Co-owner of ThermalWood Canada, takes us back to 2005 and the day his brother-in-law, Pierre Friolet, who operated a company that did tree cutting and preparation for sawmills, “showed up on my doorstep with an armful of thermally modified wood and said, ‘Here’s the way of the future. This is the way we have to go.’”

Friolet had been on a mission to find new harvesting equipment for his own business, and it was purely serendipitous that he discovered this technology that had been developed in Finland for use with softwood. This, he believed, presented an exciting manufacturing and entrepreneurial opportunity in the North American wood industry, where it was virtually unknown.

At the same time, Lennon, who had enjoyed a 30-year career as an engineer at Brunswick Mines, which had just announced its closure, was facing the decision of whether to accept a position with the company on another continent, something his family did not want him to do. “As I was helping Pierre put a business plan together, doing research, and getting more involved, I was thinking this would be a good time to exit the mining world and enter the entrepreneurial world,” he says.

“The mine was scheduled to close in 2008, but it kept going for five more years and so I did both jobs; I continued in a leadership role at the mine and worked at developing our business. I didn’t take a salary as I was already being paid, and that allowed us to grow and become viable,” Lennon shares.

“This was a new technology in an old, mature market, and only a few people knew about it, so it required a lot of education. On top of that, there couldn’t have been a worse time to start a business than during the recession of 2008.”

The recession, however, forced Lennon and Friolet to change their business model, because in the beginning they were only going to offer their services for thermal modification. Wood manufacturing businesses would send ThermalWood their lumber, which would be treated and sent back for them to develop and manufacture their own product.

But when the recession started, no one in North America was ready to start developing their own products, so ThermalWood had to either close its doors or reinvent itself.

“Reinventing was more to my liking because I can’t quit once I start, so what we did was look for where the money was and where people understood the product, and that was Europe,” Lennon tells us. “That changed our target area, and because we couldn’t offer them service, we had to offer them product. So, we started to develop our own products and now we ship to countries around the world.”

The process and the product
The thermal wood treatment process as noted was first developed for softwood lumber, but because Lennon and Friolet wanted to use maple, ash, birch, and oak imported from mills in Quebec and Ontario, as well as New York, Indiana, and Pennsylvania, the equipment they purchased had to be converted, with over 200 recipes developed and tested for treating each type of hardwood. The wood, carefully stacked with a two-inch space between each layer to allow heat and steam to circulate clockwise, is loaded into the propane-heated kiln at the optimum temperature and length of time, which varies for different species.

In the process, the wood is physically changed at a molecular level, transforming the sugars such that it becomes hydrophobic and unattractive to insects and other pests. This means it does not soak up moisture from the air and is resistant to water damage, so will not warp, swell, shrink, or rot. An added benefit is an attractive, rich, and even coloration, which becomes darker the longer it is left in the kiln.

“Treating hardwood to create a stable, insect- and mold-resistant product has allowed these species to play in markets they couldn’t have played in before,” says Lennon. “They would normally be designated for furniture or interior use, but because of our process, we can take them outside.” This has resulted in a line of exterior siding and decking products, and components for outdoor furniture in addition to interior products such as flooring, wall and door panelling, furniture, and butcher block counter tops.

The company has also experimented with local underutilized species, such as tamarack and hemlock, which most sawmills do not want to cut because they are resinous and gummy. But after thermal treating, these species become as hard as steel, and when left outside in the sun for three months, weather to look like old barn wood. Customers are using it for accent walls or sliding doors for closets, but because of softwood lumber tariffs, it is only sold locally.

The company’s finished hardwood products are shipped across Canada—with distributors in Alberta and British Columbia—as well as to the United States, several European countries, and the Caribbean. European consumers appreciate the benefits of thermally treated softwood and are excited by the range of hardwood options, while the products’ termite-resistant qualities are particularly valued in the Caribbean. “Architects in Barbados took a piece of our wood and shoved it into a termite mound and the termites didn’t touch it for six months,” Lennon says.

Obsidian Ebony—creating a buzz in the music industry
In 2020, Lennon heard about difficulties musical instrument manufacturers, especially luthiers, were experiencing in sourcing good quality ebony wood for guitar fingerboards. Ebony is valued for its stability, ensuring a guitar will not go out of tune mid-performance due to humidity, but sadly the exotic African wood is becoming an endangered species. It wasn’t long before Lennon launched an R&D project to see if he could find a wood alternative for ebony, and after several years of trial and error—and building a small testing kiln—finally found a sustainable alternative, which is as hard and durable as ebony, and as dark and shiny in appearance.

Obsidian Ebony is made from torrefied maple that has been infused with resin under pressure and then cured under heat, for a much longer time than the other treated products, as the longer the time, the darker and more durable it is. “That makes a very stiff piece of wood that has the same density and colour as ebony. Moreover, we feel good about it, because it’s a sustainable product, and we could be helping to save a species that is becoming extinct.”

Obsidian Ebony has been industry-tested by luthiers including Fender and Gibson, who found it to be very workable, and guitarists who enjoyed playing instruments made with it. It’s also been favorably reviewed in such magazines as Tone Journey (April 2024) and Guitar World (September 2024), which noted the process “replaces 35 years of air drying and gives it a vintage sound.”

“We’ve soft-launched it,” Lennon explains, “and now that we have proof of concept and respect in the market, we’re preparing to take it to a commercial level.”

As that’s happening, he’s also thinking ahead to other applications for Obsidian Ebony and perhaps other exotic woods such as rosewood, and their potential for other stringed instruments—bass, violin, viola, cello—as well as bridge blanks and headstock veneer. He is also working with luthiers who are sitting on a substantial supply of lower grade ebony and treating it for them to improve its performance qualities; when that stock has been used up, he anticipates a customer for Obsidian Ebony. “It’s how you develop good customer relationships,” he says.

Bigger can be greener
ThermalWood Canada is about to roll out a three-year, multi-phase expansion plan, which will involve a 5,000-square-foot extension to its current 46,000-square-foot building, as a place to store wood. “We are also buying a smaller kiln so we can address the needs of the luthiers.” That will be followed by the acquisition of another kiln, the same size as that currently in operation. The new kilns on order are the “new generation of kilns” which will re-circulate the heat so it can be reused and brought back into the system, with no fumes escaping the building. When the new ones come in, the old one can be connected to the new system, and “we will stop losing energy to the outdoors.”

Preventing waste from entering the landfill is another issue that concerns Lennon, who is addressing it in several ways. One is by grinding up wood chips and narrow, leftover strips of solid wood and selling it in bulk as mulch. Typically, mulch blows away and has to be replaced, but this is an environmentally friendly product with no dyes or chemicals, it looks great, and since it doesn’t retain water, it releases it back into the ground in a timely fashion.

In addition, wood chips have been approved by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and are being sold for barbecuing. Lennon is currently exploring a market for wood dust, which has high concentrations of lime and, when mixed with peat moss and topsoil, can help plants grow.

All of this is only possible because the company’s wood has not been treated with chemical preservatives. As Lennon says, “We like to be environmentally friendly, and it’s all about seeing what we can do. Our planet is going downhill; Mother Nature is changing her course because of things we have done, so if there is anything we can do now to change that course, we’re going to try. We’re just putting a little dent in it, but if everyone’s doing a little bit, then together we can make things happen.”

The post Thermally Modified Wood That’s Built to Last<p class="company">ThermalWood Canada</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

It is no stretch to say that those companies are both the foundation and the unsung heroes of America’s entire manufacturing industry. Without them, mass production could not exist.

We spoke with Mike Hetherington, President of Franchino Mold & Engineering Company (FMEC), the ISO 9001:2015 certified company based in Lansing, Michigan, which serves cutting-edge manufacturing customers across the U.S. and around the globe in the automotive, aerospace, agriculture, construction, consumer goods, furniture/household, marine, and material-handling manufacturing industries.

FMEC is an industry leader in the design and engineering of medium to large die cast dies and plastic injection molds, which include high-pressure (from 1200- to 8500-ton) injection molds, gas-assist molds, structural foam molds, compression molds, and stack molds. In addition, it offers contract machining, preventive maintenance, and mold/die repair services.

Hetherington, who joined the family-owned company in 1997 as a designer and worked his way up to Manager of Engineering and Vice President of Operations before becoming President in 2020, tells us the company got its start in 1955 when Richard Franchino began working out of his garage in Lansing, Michigan. Six years later, in 1961, he moved into a larger standalone facility.

His son Robert (Bob) joined him in 1974, with a mechanical engineering background. Together, they continued to build the company based on the highest level of craftsmanship. Bob’s son, Kent, Vice President of Operations, joined the company in 2012 and his daughter, Hollie Rusthoven, Director of IT, joined in 2015.
“At one point we had three facilities in Lansing, one in Jackson, and one out of state, but since have combined all the facilities and operations under one roof,” explains Hetherington. “Now we take up 98,000 square feet, 78,000 square feet of climate-controlled space, which includes a recent 18,000-square-foot extension.”

He goes on to explain that this expansion (80’ x 225’ x 50’) is a dedicated mold-making area, with an 80-ton main crane and four 25-ton auxiliary cranes, “for our guys who are putting our molds together. Each has their own area set up with air, electric, water, and overhead cranes. Everything is at their fingertips, so they’re not stopping to look for anything.”

From inception to the present, Hetherington says FMEC’s goals have remained constant: “To produce results with products that exceed our customers’ quality and schedule expectations, while providing growth and prosperity for the company and its employees.” The key to the company’s success, he believes, is in its focus on people, process, and technology. “If we can get those three things right, then everything else falls into place.”

FMEC considers its people to be its greatest strength, with Human Resources Manager Brad Rusthoven playing a key role in attracting and retaining the most skilled, qualified, and motivated people in the trade. Employees are hired, reviewed, rewarded, and recognized based on how closely they are aligned with the company’s core values of teamwork, hard work, innovation, trustworthiness, and integrity.

As Rusthoven explains, “We want an employee who: 1. Gets It, that is, one who truly understands the role, knows what’s expected, comprehends the culture and core values; one who 2. Wants It, who is interested and motivated; and one who has the 3. Capacity, the knowledge, experience, or education to do the job, and the necessary physical, emotional, and mental capabilities. We would prefer to spend our time training the right person who shows they have the character to do the right thing and work as part of a team.”

While many of FMEC’s employees have been with the company for 20 or more years, the company recognizes the importance of continuing to recruit and train new employees who will be ready to take the place of retirees. Currently, eight of the 85 employees are apprentices.

To that end, Rusthoven spends a considerable amount of time visiting local career centers, talking about the advantages of a career in the industry, and working with students through the company’s internal apprenticeship program. This valuable program leads students through to qualifications as CNC machinists or mold-makers, along with students at Lansing Community College also enrolled in the Manufacturing Engineering Technology program as designers or machinists.

“Brad does an excellent job working with career centers and local schools and because of that we are ‘a preferred employer,’” Hetherington says. “We get an opportunity to talk with the top students prior to graduation. We are proud of our apprenticeship program because it provides the apprentices with the technical and personal skills needed to succeed in the workplace.”

On the retention side, Hetherington cites the company’s clean, safe, climate-controlled workspace, where employees earn competitive wages and undergo annual performance reviews based on key performance indicators which help everyone stay on track and understand what is expected of them.

The process begins with the seven-member leadership team, including Hetherington and Rusthoven, who participated in offsite training days, learning how to become effective leaders. They work on communication and conflict management skills, and on developing an understanding of how their leadership can impact company culture and how that culture in turn impacts productivity. Based on that learning comes the establishment of leadership team goals, which starts with a positive, strong, productive, and yet open culture. The group also provides vision and strategic leadership to meet the cost, quality, and delivery expectations of customers; and ensures continuous improvement by tracking data and responding accordingly.

“We are data-driven, and we base our decisions on our key performance indicators of safety, quality, delivery, and cost. We have internal matrices that define what we are doing well, that ask if we are doing what we should be doing, and do we have room for improvement in any of those four key areas,” Hetherington explains. “Then we follow those KPIs into the work centers, because each one of those centers has safety, quality, delivery, and costs they are responsible for, and the team leader in that area ensures the center is meeting those goals,” he says. “From there, we waterfall it down to the individual’s performance reviews, so it goes all the way down, from the corporate level to the individual.”

To keep it all organized, FMEC has developed sophisticated tracking tools that support a clearly defined workflow process beginning with the RFQs and continuing through the job release, engineering, purchasing, planning and scheduling, production, quality, assembly, and delivery phases of every project. These tools also allow management to determine capacity week by week for months in advance and adjust workloads on time so that schedules are met and downtime is eliminated.

Since its inception, FMEC has invested in the best technology available and continues to believe that research and investments that increase capacity and improve efficiency are crucial to its success. FMEC has all the equipment one might expect from a manufacturer of this size and scope. There are multiple boring mills, CNC mills, 21 CAD/CAM workstations, grinders, lathes, cranes, drills, MIG and TIG welders, laser scanner inspectors, and transportation/delivery vehicles.

But over and above these, there are some exciting new acquisitions, because, as Hetherington tells us, “Our goal is to find and obtain technology that is advanced, flexible, and automated.”

One of the newest and truly significant investments is the Hermle C650 5 Axis Machining Center with a 14-pallet changer. “This is a crucial piece of equipment for us to become more automated because the 14 pallets allow the machine to work when we’re not here,” Hetherington explains. “Our operators load workpieces into the carousel, and when the operation is finished with one workpiece, the robot takes it out and replaces it with another from the carousel, so it’s not waiting for an operator to load and unload the machine.”

These factors—people, processes, and technology—combine to guarantee that the die cast dies and plastic injection molds that are designed, engineered, and built at FMEC’s plant will be of the highest quality, ensuring that the products its customers produce with those tools will be of the same high quality.

“We’ve been extremely fortunate with our workload that our customers have entrusted us with in the past,” Hetherington says. “With our ongoing continuous improvement in people, process and technology, we are excited about the future of FMEC, our customers, and our team members.”

The post World-Class Tooling That Exceeds Expectations<p class="company">Franchino Mold & Engineering</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

An exploration of the company’s output reveals a multitude of sparkling crystal shapes, each featuring customized designs which are floating within the glass, as if created by magic—but rather created by multi-talented artists and designers using sophisticated processes, including subsurface 3D laser technology. Many of the company’s creations are further enhanced by additional processes, including deep surface etching and hand painted colour fill, whereby the artist adds colour to the etched designs, logos, and text. When customers require gradient colours to be included in their award designs, a Micro Resolution UV colour print is utilized.

It should be noted that none of the images shown on the company website are computer-generated images, but rather actual photographs of works that Crystal Sensations has designed and produced for its clients.

The numbers are impressive, with over 10,000 custom designs spanning more than 38 industries, including entertainment and media, health care and pharmaceuticals, industrial and manufacturing, financial services, government agencies, professional associations, education, real estate, and architecture, agriculture, and infrastructure and transportation business sectors.

As company President and CEO Miles Bocknek explains, “it’s not about being the biggest organization of its kind; it’s about being the best.” Crystal Sensations has achieved this by leveraging advanced technology and hiring an ultra-talented creative team that truly cares about the quality of the work they do (called the Zing Team by Director of Sales Jerome Bacchus, as they “put the ‘zing’ into amazing).” This equally applies to the artists who create for the laser applications and for the surface etching.

In a wide-ranging interview with Bocknek and Bacchus, we learn about the company’s serendipitous beginnings and how it evolved, through a commitment to excellence, into the company it is today.

In 1990, at the suggestion of his cousin, who had authored a coffee table book of images of the Earth taken from outer space, Bocknek started offering the gift book to corporations in the Toronto area. As the enterprises grew, he was offering approximately 15 different kinds of giftware, including glass and crystal awards.

“By the late ’90s,” he recalls, “when I was attending the New York Gift Show, I discovered a factory from Israel which was offering the most incredible crystal with 3D subsurface laser engraving,” (meaning the engraving was on the inside of the crystal). “It was a brand-new technology, and it was stunning,” he says.

“I immediately saw the business potential. They did not have anyone representing their line in Canada, and I became their sole Canadian representative, first offering it to my corporate clients, and then to sales agents and distributors. I quickly pivoted, changing my focus from working directly with corporate buyers to working with promotional agencies who offered branded merchandise to their clients.”

Everyone loved the engraved crystal products as much as Bocknek did, but importing the product line from overseas proved to be too costly for many businesses, given that orders were custom and had to be flown in to meet short delivery deadlines.

That didn’t mean, however, that Bocknek couldn’t continue to offer the crystal that corporate clients so admired; he just had to find a way to manufacture the subsurface laser-engraved crystals in Canada, so that they could be offered across North America more cost-effectively. Currently, as it turns out, clients all over the globe are reaching out to Crystal Sensations, some from as far away as Australia.

Searching for an industrial laser machine at that time that could replicate the fine work being done in Israel was a challenge. Bocknek traveled to Eastern Europe initially, where the technology is believed to be born, but eventually located, some months later, more sophisticated laser technology in Western Europe.

“When I went over there and saw it, I immediately knew that was the machine I was going to acquire. It was hundreds of thousands of dollars, but I was determined to arrange financing for it. I vividly recall my wife saying, ‘you are not mortgaging our house.’ I knew I was going to produce millions of dollars’ worth of awards over the years, and it only made sense to source the best technology available,” he tells us.

“A critical part of a working laser machine is the software that runs the system and allows the artist to create an engraving file from the artist’s 3D CAD work. At the time I purchased the machine, there were two options of software. One version was more advanced, and did a lot more than the basic alternative. It was complex, well engineered, but very costly. Looking back, investing in the more robust software was one of the best decisions I have ever made,” Bocknek says.

That advanced software is no longer available. It was discontinued many years ago. “Having the advanced software has its advantages. Without all of its features, the details seen in our engraving wouldn’t be as intricate,” Bocknek says.

When the laser machine arrived in Markham in January 2002, Bocknek arranged for a specialist in laser technology to come to the company facility and help them set up and calibrate the equipment. “Bringing in this individual was a game changer,” Bocknek says. “He knew everything about the system, and showed ‘why’ it worked, and thus how to extract amazing results from it. It would have taken us a lifetime to gather this knowledge about physics and laser energy,” says Bocknek. “In a few days we were shown what others probably will never acquire in decades of operating a system.”

Among the things they learned was how water temperature affects the beam quality. “There are many highly technical details I could discuss, but we’d rather the results of the work we produce speak for itself.”

One stunning example of what is possible when combining artistry with sophisticated technology is the 3D art in an award for the U.S. Marine Corps. Created by Senior Designer and Head of the Art Department, Christopher Loates, it is based on Joe Rosenthal’s 1945 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.”

“Christopher worked from the photograph and I think it took him several days of design time, working eight hours a day. Once the 3D image was designed in the CAD software, he then converted it to a point cloud file, a 3D image of dots. This file can then be read by the software in the laser system, which tells the laser where to place the energy bursts that create the tiny bubbles within the glass,” Bocknek explains.

Most of the awards Crystal Sensations creates take from 15 to 90 minutes to engrave once the design has been completed, “but we have done large signs for companies where we put it in a piece of float glass on a Friday night and it finishes engraving sometime the next day, which is at the extreme end of the time required for engraving,” he shares.

Although technology is at the forefront of Crystal Sensations, both Bocknek and Bacchus are “old-school” when it comes to working with clients, preferring telephone calls to emails to extract details of a project. The two agree that they like to engage clients on the phone, have dynamic and fluid conversations, and drill down on exactly what the client is looking for: how many, what price point, what style, and all the pertinent details needed to put together an offering for quoting.

“We have to work swiftly and know what we’re doing, because our product offering is not as simple as taking an ‘off-the-shelf’ cup, putting a logo on it, and sending it out,” Bocknek says. “If the crystal size and shape requested is in stock, and it’s a small quantity, we can turn around a rush order in a few days, but if someone wants a custom shaped design for hundreds or thousands of awards, we may need several months’ lead time,” he explains. “When someone tells us they want 75 awards a week from now, there are restrictions on what we can produce, but if the event is months away, we have time to plan, custom-design, and if necessary, import a specific crystal shape and bring them in by sea, as opposed to flying them in, which would make the end product unnecessarily expensive.”

Adds Bacchus, “During the consulting process, I like to share with people that we will deliver exactly what is quoted, in the timeframe we have committed to, once we know the parameters. That is something we pride ourselves on, delivering to the expectation.”

Emails do, of course, have their place in communication, because before any actual engraving or colour work is begun, artwork is exchanged, as are art proofs and art approvals, giving clients the confidence that the finished product will look exactly as ordered.

While Crystal Sensations operates on a business-to-business model, Bacchus says his thoughts are of the person no one from the company will ever see or speak to, the award’s recipient. “At the end of the day, we are delivering to the recipient who will think it is fantastic to be recognized for their accomplishment. People will display their awards for decades to come, so we put out the best quality awards we can so they will have something to cherish and be proud of,” he says.

“This is one of the reasons we continue to repeat some of the exact projects we started 10 or 15 years ago. Clients return for repeat orders and say, ‘this is our flagship award that we award people who have achieved this pinnacle or that milestone.’”

As an example, Bacchus tells us about an insurance company’s request to have Crystal Sensations design an award for the company’s top producers, who are members of the Million Dollar Round Table, which they achieve by producing a million dollars in premiums for three consecutive years. This company has been refilling the order for the last 15 years.

“These recipients are not making peanuts,” Bacchus says, “they are people earning hundreds of thousands of dollars in income because of the millions they produce. I’ve been told by the distributor that the insurance company executive reports that even with all the money these recipients make, they cherish this crystal award and display them on their mantels. It’s a testament to their hard work and success.”

The post Sensational Quality Leads to Stunning Looks<p class="company">Crystal Sensations</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

LLS has a team of certified EPA HVAC specialists who service all makes and models of aquariums. The company recognizes that an aquarium, lobster tanks included, is a living ecosystem, and routine maintenance is crucial in maintaining a well-functioning mechanical system to support the marine species that live within.

Not only does LLS offer its White Glove Quarterly Service (Full Service, every three months), it responds within 24 hours to emergencies in its service areas. In addition, LLS holds patents on innovative features including the Raintray Bio Filtration System™, Asset Protection™ built into every tank it manufactures, and the unique Signature Shellfish Spa™, set to be an industry game-changer.

To learn more about LLS’s products and services that guarantee supermarkets and restaurants can offer fresh, succulent, and healthy seafood products—lobster, oysters, clams, scallops, or crab—while ensuring the seafood department operates efficiently, we spoke with Thomas Olsen, company President and CEO.

Before Olsen took us back to LLS’s beginnings in 1989, he told us one thing that was important for readers to understand. “I cannot talk about my company or where we are today without talking about my Christian faith, which is the reason for our success. We are family-owned and faith-driven, and we feel our reason for being is serving others, doing good in the community, and giving back.”

The story behind Lobster Life Systems and marine salt
LLS was founded by chemist Richard Tokosh, who Olsen says held multiple patents for formulas he developed for cosmetics and soaps sold by Avon, as well as the Intuition razor with a built-in soap dispenser. But his venture into manufacturing marine salt was serendipitous. According to Olsen, Tokosh was having dinner with a friend who confided about difficulties in keeping fish alive in his aquarium and wondered if Tokosh could help, since he was knowledgeable about the different salts used in soap.

Tokosh had a good relationship with chemists at the University of Rhode Island’s oceanography department and together they formulated a marine salt, which Tokosh began manufacturing in his garage and giving to friends who found their fish thriving on it. Then he started selling it to local pet stores and supermarkets for use in live lobster tanks. At the time he was still working for Avon, but the marine salt business became so successful that he acquired a larger facility and hired his first employee, and so LLS was born.

The high-quality marine salt continues to be a cornerstone of the company to this day, with the product sold in 40-pound boxes in the eastern U.S. and shipped by truck to a distributor on the west coast.

Meanwhile, in 1989, Olsen was working his way through the seafood industry, starting at an independent fish market and then at ShopRite as seafood manager at the retail level, before being hired by the parent company, Wakefern Food, in a corporate position as seafood merchandiser. “I was planning new stores, recommending equipment and whatever it takes to increase sales, and I was buying lobster tanks from LLS,” he says.

Olsen had also developed a good relationship with Tokosh and, in 2012, he approached him about buying the company, as at age 70 he was ready to retire.

“He told me, ‘I have an investor who has a ton of money who wants to buy my company, but zero knowledge about the industry, and I have you, with a ton of knowledge and zero money. But I am not going to take the blood and sweat I put into this company and hand it over to an investor who will destroy it, as all investors understand is dollars and cents. You are the best person I know to grow the company.’”

By 2014, Olsen was ready. “After we talked numbers, I cashed out everything I owned, my 401(k), and my savings account, refinanced my house, and bought the company. To his credit, Richard held the note, and I repaid him over time.”

Custom manufacturing and advanced systems
10 years later, Tokosh’s belief in Olsen’s extensive 26-year industry experience and knowledge, and trust that he could “elevate LLS into a whole new stratosphere,” has been validated. Today it is a North American-wide company, with a 45 percent growth rate since 2014 and patented, innovative features, products, and services that put it ahead of the competition.

There are other companies manufacturing lobster tanks in an assembly line format, with standard sizes, “but we don’t do that. Everything we make is made by hand and made to order, and this is where we have a leg up, because I know from experience that every bit of real estate in a supermarket is valuable, and the merchandiser’s job is to capitalize on that.”

He shares an example of a situation where the equipment purchasing agent is dealing with a 31-inch space to fit in a lobster tank and the only offerings are either an inch too long or three inches too short, leaving an empty space that is too small to be used profitably. “So, we work with the blueprint, and we build the tank to fit and capitalize on sales,” he says.

“I live through the eyes of our customers (supermarkets, restaurants, and wholesalers); I know what they look for, how they operate, what goes on behind the counter, and I share this with my team so they can understand the world we service. Many companies operate in the red on lobsters and where we come in is with some of the features we have built into our tanks that will keep the lobster alive longer and make it easier for our associates to maintain and clean the tank, ultimately saving them money.”

Innovative offerings
In the event of a power or pump failure which prevents oxygen flowing into the water, lobsters will die, because they cannot live in stagnant water for more than an hour and will suffocate due to lack of oxygen. To overcome this, LLS has devised a system which, through the force of gravity when the power has failed, will allow the water to drop into a holding tank beneath the visible tank, allowing the lobsters to live up to 10 hours outside water. When the power returns, the tank will automatically fill up again.

“We call this Asset Protection™, the asset being the lobster, because the fatality rate has been greatly reduced,” Olsen shares.

Before lobsters can be put into a display case, they need to be purged—that is, placed in a container with cold water poured on their backs and left there for 20 minutes to urinate and defecate and acclimatize themselves to their new environment. Dealing with the process is a messy, unpleasant procedure for employees, often resulting in spills on the floor and splashes on workers, as store employees have to remove the lobsters and empty buckets of purged water. But LLS’ patented Self-contained Purge System has ended the messiness.

Under the display tank is a separate tank in which the lobsters are placed, and which is filled up with water from the display tank. After 20 minutes, the purge water is drained and the lobsters are removed, inspected, and then placed in the display tank, which has refilled. “We have made the process easy and sanitary. It’s a feather in our cap as no one else has done that and we’ve patented it.”

LLS’s newest product offer, developed and perfected over the last five years, is its Signature Shellfish Spa™. It is designed specifically for raw bar restaurants or any retailer who wants to up their seafood game by offering varieties of shellfish—mollusks, oysters, clams, steamers—that are the cleanest, freshest, and safest possible.

In an attractive unit, easily serviced from behind, ice-cold, UV-sterilized water is circulated and rained down upon multiple layers of shellfish varieties, giving overlooked varieties center stage. The shellfish are plump and juicy, the clams are sand-free, and even more important, they are clean. There’s an inherent danger in eating raw shellfish, as Olsen explains. “In their natural environment, clams and oysters are filter feeders, and they are taking in pathogens as they keep the water we swim in clean. We want to make the shellfish clean and safe for people to eat, and when the sterilized water passes through them, the pathogens are killed off,” he says.

“The UV-sterilization units we use are manufactured by Aqua Ultraviolet out of California, one of the largest producers of this type of unit. We put in two of them, so our units are rated to treat up to 300 gallons of water, although we only circulate 70 gallons. We overtreat as we understand the risks involved with raw seafood and we want to eliminate the risks.”

LLS engaged an independent laboratory to run comparison tests on seafood kept in the spa and refrigerated seafood. The tests showed that the amounts of coliform bacteria in refrigerated shellfish actually increased over time, whereas the amounts in shellfish from the spa decreased over time. The longer the time in the spa, the greater the decrease, while the converse was true for the refrigerated shellfish: the longer the latter were kept refrigerated, the more the bacteria proliferated.

This independent study gave Olsen the confidence to take the Signature Shellfish Spa™ to national restaurant shows in New York and Chicago, and since then interest has grown, with restaurants and retailers who have purchased the units indicating overwhelmingly positive responses from consumers and increased sales of over 50 percent.

The future for LLS
“Ours is a growing business,” Olsen concludes, “and I believe it is growing because we put our faith and trust in God. I’m not going to tell you I am the smartest businessman or a brilliant marketer, but I think our success is because of our faith and our commitment to our customers,” he says.

“We maintain a relationship with customers after our sales, and we do pride ourselves on these relationships and on being there for them when they call for advice. We remember who they are and when they call, we speak directly to them—there’s no automated answering service.” Something which this writer can verify!

The post Where Fresh Comes to Life<p class="company">Lobster Life Systems</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.

Hathaway, who’s been with the company for 25 years, tells us how it began 40 years ago when the original owner, who was in the retail furniture business, needed a secure place to store excess furniture shipments where they would be protected from rain or wind. Today, the company still has storage trailers, but is also one of the leaders in Maine when it comes to distributing shipping containers for storage needs.

“One thing led to another and that got us into the storage business itself, and from there it segued into containers as the more popular option for storage needs. Customers use us now to customize containers that can be used as office spaces on job sites and other business ventures. In addition to storage, Maine Trailer also has a full trailer service department, a parts showroom, a sales and leasing department, and a trailer registration department,” he explains.

Containers provide solutions
Maine Trailer, Hathaway tells us, is the largest independent dealer of containers in the state, with most of the ISO steel containers the company rents, sells, and/or customizes manufactured in China. All meet international specifications for worldwide shipping.

Imports come directly into the U.S. in these containers on ships where they are stacked 17 to 18 high and 20 wide, which adds up to more than 100,000 containers arriving annually in ports all along the Atlantic seaboard, where they are unloaded. Retailers can then buy both new and used containers. ‘New’ refers to containers that have crossed the ocean only once, with used containers having crossed many times. And, while used containers may show exterior dents or scratches, they have different classifications, such as wind and watertight, or cargo worthy. Maine Trailer always purchases wind and watertight containers for its used inventory to make sure customers are receiving a quality product.

By partnering with CARU Containers, a global container distributor, Maine Trailer maintains a robust inventory of containers in its yard, with a website updating inventory daily, allowing customers to see what is in stock in real time.

The external measurements of the rugged steel containers measure 8 feet wide by 20 or 40 feet long by 8 feet 6 inches high, with the most sought-after containers being the 40-foot-high cubes, offering one extra foot in height in comparison to the standard height containers.

“People can call us and say, ‘I want number 101342 in blue,’ and we can check our system, make sure it’s still available, and give them a price and delivery cost right then and there,” says Hathaway. “We are unique in that there are other companies who will advertise containers online, and customers can order them, but they may not be able to pick out the exact one they want. We want to make shopping even more convenient where a customer could shop for a container while sitting on the couch in their own living room.”

Containers can be sold as-is for customers’ storage needs, or they can be customized in-house to meet a variety of needs, something Maine Trailer is very skilled at. “We tell our customers if you can dream it, we can make it happen,” Brady explains.

To create container office spaces, for example, the work begins with building a frame, cutting out spaces for a door and dual-pane vinyl windows, applying spray foam insulation if desired, and ensuring everything is welded and caulked correctly. Custom office spaces can be provided with an HVAC system, electrical package, and security cage, and repainted with the client’s color of choice. These solutions are ideal for businesses that require more workspace or need to spread out, as some did during the pandemic, or for temporary construction-site offices which can be moved to different sites when a job is completed.

For customers who may want a modified storage shed, customization can include placing double-width doors or even up to three roll-up doors, something self-storage companies like because they can put in dividers and rent space to three separate individuals. “People like these storage units,” according to Brady, “because they are wind-resistant and watertight, especially important with regards to the weather patterns of recent years. People know what they have stored there will stay secure and dry and don’t have to worry about a wooden shed blowing over or roof tiles coming off.”

Recently, the company attended the Maine Resource Recovery Association trade show to discuss its products and capabilities in providing solutions at dump stations and recycling storage operations.

In addition, Brady notes that there are many variations to what people think of as the standard container. Variations include refrigerated containers, containers that have a tarp over an open top so they can be filled with bulk materials, those that have sides that open and can be used to store motorized vehicles, as well as smaller “mini” containers that can nest inside larger ones.

As a former physical education teacher, Brady is proud to tell us that Maine Trailer is the official trailer and storage container partner of the Maine Black Bears at the University of Maine in Orono. The University is currently using some of the company’s containers as they renovate their athletic spaces. “It’s great to have support from them,” he shares. “We don’t have any professional sports teams in Maine, but when it comes to hockey, everyone is watching the Black Bears. Being their official partner is a big deal.”

Made-in-America trailers, parts, and service
After acquiring trailers to store furniture early on, Maine Trailer eventually expanded into a retailer of North American-manufactured, brand-name trailers.

The company’s trailers, which can be purchased or leased, are true workhorses, manufactured in North America, including CAM Superline, LOOK Trailers, Econoline, and Manac. These trailers, with various payload capacities, are ready to fulfill a variety of needs: hauling equipment, dumping, or enclosed cargo transportation.

Maine Trailer, in partnership with Aurora Parts To Go, stocks a complete inventory of over-the-road and heavy duty trailer parts, which can be delivered free within the state. Frequent customers can avail themselves of the company’s Parts Ordering System where they can list specific preferences, brands, and pricing for a myriad of trailer-related parts.

Meanwhile, Maine Trailer’s expert technicians deliver service in-house or on the road in Maine. The Hampden location includes a seven-bay garage where skilled mechanics handle tough repair jobs.

Registration from Maine to Alaska to Hawaii—and everywhere in-between
Since 1985, Maine Trailer has been a bonded, licensed registration agent for the State of Maine for registering and titling trailers. But as Hathaway tells us, “We register fleets of trailers across the U.S. as we go well beyond the state of Maine. Companies out of Alaska, Hawaii, California—in fact, in all 50 states—revert to the state of Maine for their trailer titles and tags.”

He explains that it is relatively inexpensive to register in Maine because owners do not have to pay property tax, as they do in many other states, and they can register for up to 12 years, with 5-year plates being the most popular. “Once they register with us, we send out notices when it is time to renew, and all the owners have to do is let us know if they want to renew their plate. We send them a new registration card and there’s no need for them to have to be off the road.”

Currently, Maine Trailer is developing a new website that will make it even easier to complete the registration process—just the latest in a series of smart moves for this experienced and trustworthy company.

The post If It Has to Do with Containers or Trailers, Maine Trailer Can Handle It<p class="company">Maine Trailer</p> appeared first on Manufacturing In Focus.