Chances are by now, as summer winds into August, you’ve taken at least one long day-trip, be it to a beach vacation or July 4 cookout. And that trip likely began where most day-trips do: at the gas station.
If so, there’s a good chance you used a product that has seen the inside of PMP Corp.
The 57-year-old PMP – originally Petroleum Meter and Pump – has called Avon Park South its home for the last 30 years.
The company, which employs about 73 people in its 35,000-square-foot factory, specializes in remanufacturing products that are used by gas stations to measure, pump and account for gasoline sales. The devices include meters and analog computers that are inside dispensers, vapor recovery pumps which collect air displaced when cars are fueled, and the printer systems attendants use to track sales.
The company’s claim to fame, according to President Thomas McGee, is its ability to remanufacture things better than they were originally built.
“We look at what causes something to fail in the first place, then we try and improve upon it by tweaking it a little bit,” McGee said. PMP is the largest independent remanufacturer of gasoline dispensing equipment in the country.
PMP’s building is on Security Drive, one of the three main streets – along with Tower Lane and Darling Drive – which comprise Avon Park South.
Not far from PMP lies Pro-Line Printing. The 75-person Avon facility is one of four nationwide for Pro-Line, which specializes in printing the newspaper advertising inserts for major retailers such as Wal-Mart and Home Depot. The company is based in Arlington, Texas.
On nearby Darling Drive sits the specialty photonics division of OFS. The division, part of Japan-based Furukawa, employs about 120 people and makes advanced optical fibers, and specialty cables and connectors that are used in high-powered lasers.
OFS was originally owned by Ensign-Bickford, which started developing Avon Park South in the 1970s, although it later sold most of its holdings in the park. Ensign still runs Avon Park North, which has no manufacturing facilities, and Powder Forest Business Park in Simsbury.
Also on Darling Drive sits the 177,000 square-foot factory for Legere Woodworking. The 100-person millworking facility builds major commercial interiors for organizations all across New England. Some of its more noteworthy past projects include the cabinets, lockers and room dividers at UConn’s Burton Family Football Complex and the interior dorm renovations for Yale University.
Legere employs about as many as its neighbor, Reflexite’s Technology Center, which specializes in making highly reflective material found on highway signs, police cars and ambulances. Much of that material is cut, prepped and shipped from Reflexite’s other location in New Britain.
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Kenneth J. St. Onge is managing editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
