Columbia may not boast many manufacturing companies, but this town of 5,600 has at least one big one.
Columbia Manufacturing Inc., which sits along Route 66, Columbia’s main artery, is among the town’s largest employers with well over 100 people. The company manufactures aerospace products for the military and industrial customers.
The military has awarded the company well over $1.25 million in contracts over the last year to develop parts, including a $1.17 million award to manufacture turbines and engines, and a $52,000 contract awarded earlier this month to develop damper rings, which are used to seal pistons.
The 27-year-old company has two main factory buildings that comprise a combined 100,000 square feet, making it not only the largest manufacturer in town, but one of the largest manufacturing facilities in the state.
Of course, Columbia also a number of small businesses that machine, weld and perform other types of manufacturing.
Consider W. H. Rose, which is just down the road. The 25-person company, which claims to have the largest selection of truck equipment in the Nutmeg State, sells the snow plows, dump trucks and other equipment to local truckers and municipalities.
They do not manufacture the products themselves, although they do install them, which — between welding, painting and other activities — can often be as involved as any manufacturing process on a factory floor.
A little further down the street sits an even smaller manufacturing shop, FB Manion & Sons, which specializes in machining extremely hard metals that are used in the aerospace products built by companies such as Pratt &Whitney.
They use a manufacturing technology based on superabrasives, which are better at grinding metals like nickel which are common in turbines. Although they typically build smaller widgets for the companies that supply Pratt, they occasionally do work with the aerospace-engine maker for experimental products, said co-owner Howard Bergenholtz.
The three person shop uses about 10,000 square feet of a 21,000 square foot building in Columbia Business Park on Commerce Drive.
Not too far from the park, on Route 87, sits another manufacturer Accu-Clutch, which specializes in building unique clutches and brakes that are used on a variety of industrial products.
The devices built by the four-person company are designed as high-end replacements for the clutches found on manufacturing and industrial equipment found in many area machine shops and factories.
Kenneth J. St. Onge is managing editor of the Hartford Business Journal.