Tobacco has long been a staple crop of the farms of North Central Connecticut. In a small Somers building miles from those tobacco fields, a small company specializes in building things to help New England farmers move indoors.
Star Steel Structures, on Four Bridges Road, has been building the steel frames for greenhouses for nearly a generation. The three-person team, headed by foreman Lorin Daros, custom builds the greenhouses that are sent out as kits to commercial growers in New England, New York, New Jersey and elsewhere.
The company is owned by WH Milikowski, a greenhouse supply and distribution firm headquartered in nearby Stafford Springs, with satellite offices in New York and New Jersey. Milikowski is owned by Mark Milikowski, whose father, William, started the business in the back of a 1954 station wagon.
Up until a few years ago, Star Steel had an interesting claim to fame: It had built what was, at the time, the fourth-largest greenhouse in the country. It was 12 buildings totaling 680 feet long by 105 feet wide. It was shipped to a farm in Idaho, where it was adapted for use as a cow barn. It took three trailer trucks to get it all out there.
Several miles down the road, on Scitico Road the Somersville section of town, sits another small manufacturer: Carbon Products Inc.
The company, which was founded in the 1960s, makes the graphite brushes used in the motors that power small appliances like blenders, food processors and even vacuums. Sunbeam is its major client.
It’s now owned by Peter Ouellet, who bought Carbon Products in 1987 and moved it to Somers from Manchester in 1989.
Carbon Products, which employs six, is a manufacturing company in transition, Ouellet said. As China has become the epicenter of manufacturing, he’s had to branch off and find a new industry to peddle Carbon Product’s prowess.
That new industry is fuel cells. Carbon has been working with companies like Protonex, Parker-Hannifin and Angstrom Power to develop new ways of molding the graphite plates used in smaller fuel cells – ones that could power cell phones or other non-stationary devices.
“We’re in a good position to take advantage of fuel cell growth when it happens,” Ouellet said.
Somers is home to several other small manufacturing companies. CT Fiberoptics, headquartered on Field Road, is a 10-person manufacturer that makes fiber optic lights and laser used by dentists to examine teeth and gums. Kulas Systems Inc., also on Field Road, is a 3-person manufacturing company that makes thermocouples.
Also on Field Road is one of Somers’ largest manufacturers, one of its oldest: Conval Inc.
The company, which makes industrial valves and employs over 100, has called Somers home for 40 years. And it’s still going strong: Conval is looking to add a new building to its complex across from Field Road.
Kenneth J. St. Onge is managing editor of the Hartford Business Journal.
