A manufacturer of industrial electrical equipment wants to increase its production capacity in the City of Lockport with a $2.4 million expansion project.
Buffalo Transformer Services, which is owned by its president, Chad W. Curtis, currently occupies about 30% of the 26,000-square-foot industrial building at 10 Simonds St., which it leases from owners Anna McCann, Merritt Machinery and 10 Simonds Holdings.
McCann is president of Merritt, a 150-year-old company that manufactures slicers, lathes, clippers, tables and other machinery used to make decorative veneer and plywood. Merritt occupies the rest of the building.
But Merritt is ramping down its business as McCann prepares to retire. The building isn’t for sale yet, but Curtis wants to be able to buy it. It plans to renovate the space with “significant improvements” that “will lead to higher efficiency and an increase in hiring more skilled employment,” according to a Niagara County Industrial Development Agency project summary.
Plans include the purchase of two new overhead crane systems that can handle 30 to 50 tons each, allowing the business to not only be more streamlined but also to work on larger machines without limitations by space. It will also add two natural gas generators, a power circuit breaker system, and a new mezzanine level. And it plans to construct an extension or addition to the small bay, to push the wall out 12 feet in order to gain more space.
“We’re hoping the expansion of space both helps our day-to-day operations, as well as be able to provide better delivery to our customers,” Curtis said.
However, the company is also asking the NCIDA for $431,210 in tax breaks, including a 15-year payment-in-lieu-of-taxes that will save it $348,910, plus a $64,000 sales tax abatement and an $18,300 mortgage-recording tax break.
The company currently employs 11 full-time and two part-time workers, but plans to create another 12 full-time technician, engineering, administrative and management jobs paying an average of $83,000, and ranging from $58,000 to $115,000.
The project received initial clearance from the NCIDA board on Wednesday, pending final approval in November after an Oct. 30 public hearing.
Buffalo Transformer – which also operates as Buffalo Industrial Transformers – started in 2017 after General Electric Co. closed its Tonawanda plant that produced and serviced transformers. Curtis, who had worked at GE for 18 years, was department manager for transformer services, and he and his employees launched their own company a year later. “We were trained very well. We have a lot of skill,” Curtis said. “The industry in the United States knows that.”
The company produces and services premium furnace, reactor, power and rectifier transformers for clients, particularly in the steel, aluminum and chlorine businesses. It serves clients in the United States, Canada and South America, and also has a facility in Corapolis, Pa.
It also works with and supports local utilities such as National Grid and NYSEG, but the bulk of its growth comes from industrial clients. That’s because most transformer companies in the United States are focused on the utilities, Curtis said, so “the industrial market has been left behind,” and “our expertise coincides with the needs of our industrial customers very well.”
The company started out in a small shop in Tonawanda that they didn’t control. But it had to move out when the property owner needed to reclaim the space, and relocated to 8,000 square feet in their current building five years ago after Curtis met McCann.
“We are doing a lot of work in a very small space,” he told the NCIDA board Wednesday. “Our customer base is asking us to expand. We are in high demand. In reality, it’s the only way we will be a successful company right now.”
Reach Jonathan D. Epstein at (716) 849-4478 or jepstein@buffnews.com.
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Jonathan D. Epstein
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