It”™s the Horatio Alger story for a new century.
A smart entrepreneur begins working on a hi-tech gizmo in his garage, financed by a home equity loan and credit card debt. A decade later, the business has grown to employ more than 100 workers in a $40 million- to $50 million-a-year operation.
It sounds like a fresh face on the old rags-to-riches routine, but it is the true story of Precision Flow technologies, which last week was awarded a $100,000 loan by the Ulster County Development Corp. (UCDC) to help fund further expansion of the burgeoning Saugerties business.
The loan financing is being handled by M&T bank.
Precision Flow, a privately owned company in a 58,000-square-foot facility at 3 Tower Drive, off King’s Highway, manufactures ultrahigh-purity gas delivery systems, gas purge systems, gas mixing systems, fuel cell test systems and nano-purge systems.
“Basically, we design and manufacture highly specialized equipment that is used in the manufacturing process for making semiconductors, photovoltaic cells, solid state lighting, or LEDs, and a variety of other microelectronic processing equipment,” said company founder and President Kevin Brady.
Brady said that prospects for the company are bright, because about 70 percent of the company”™s business involves design and manufacture of LED (light emitting diode) lighting, “Which as you know is becoming a real option for the future to reduce energy consumption,” he said.
Good for all
“The project is positive for the regional economy,” said Lance Matteson, CEO of UCDC. “Expansion of Precision Flow”™s ultramodern facilities will increase production and produce a 15 percent growth in employment from the current level of about 100 highly-skilled employees. And the firm expects to add many more to meet the growing demand for its products.
“Precision Flow Technologies has much to be proud of,” he said, “including its being ranked 26th in excellence out of 5,000 manufacturing companies surveyed by Inc. magazine last September. Its employees exemplify world-class skilled personnel.”
Brady said that success will not mean relocation. “We’ve been in Saugerties since our inception in 1997 and we basically have grown our company primarily through private financing,” he said. “This (UCDC loan) allows us to continue doing that.”
The company started in his two-car garage in Saugerties and four years later expanded into its current facility, then 40,000 square feet, which it further expanded to 58,000 square feet in January. The UCDC loan will help finance renovations to the new space making it suitable to the company”™s high tech needs.
“It”™s a complicated business, a lot of engineering content, a lot of manufacturing content,” said Brady. Dealing with nano-tech manufacturing requires clean rooms and diligence in ensuring product purity and worker safety. Semiconductor manufacture uses noxious materials and can involve an array of gases that require careful handling, he said. “The equipment is designed to handle those gases safely,” he said. It also allows “the deposition of various crystal structures and other layers that are necessary to fabricate computer chips.”
Part of Precision Flow”™s businesses is related to solar technology manufacture. Matteson expressed hope the company could be a major contributor toward making Ulster County a major solar energy center. “Precision Flow is very much a part of the solar business cluster that The Solar Energy Consortium is fostering in the region.” he said.
Brady agreed that solar energy could become an ever more important part of the economy. “We sell gas delivery equipment that specifically have been designed for the solar industry, machines that go to companies that actually fabricate solar cells,” said Brady.
He added that the company already ships machines to China, where solar energy research, manufacturing and development is proceeding rapidly. “It”™s one of those now-rare instances we (U.S. businesses) get to ship our manufactured products directly to China,” Brady said. He also cited Taiwan as a destination for Precision Flow”™s equipment.
“We sort of operated under the radar here,” Brady said. “A lot of people drive by our building (in Saugerties) and have no idea what”™s going on, that inside there is really a global business.”
