Publish Date: 5/8/2011
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Adam Mellick, left, and Mike Bosica move a temperature altitude chamber into position Monday at Cascade Tek, 1530 Vista View Drive, east of Longmont in the Vista Commercial Center. Oregon-based Cascade Tek decided to open an environmental testing lab on the Front Range after Oracle’s Advanced Product Testing lab announced it was closing the lab to outside customers. |
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New lab in town - Cascade Tek will fill the void that APT left behind in Longmont
By Tony Kindelspire
© 2011 Longmont Times-Call
LONGMONT — On the wish list for those opening a new business, having a built-in customer base would have to be pretty high up there.
That’s more than just a wish for Cascade Tek, an environmental testing lab that’s having its soft opening Monday. “We’ve already received some orders,” said Terry Candlish, manager of Cascade Tek’s Hillsboro, Ore., lab and the company’s vice president of operations. “We’ve got people beating down our door.”
The idea for a Front Range location for Cascade Tek started in October, when Candlish received a phone call from Dave Thompson, who was at that time the outside testing sales manager for Oracle’s Advanced Product Testing laboratory in Longmont.
After decades — dating back to the Storage Technology days — of allowing other companies to run their products through APT’s highly technical machines, Oracle had announced it was closing the lab to outside customers. Thompson soon would be out of a job, and he knew the APT closing would leave a void.
Candlish immediately was interested. This area has a lot of testing facilities, but the type of environmental testing the APT did and that Cascade Tek does — extreme temperatures, altitude, saltwater and frost effects, etc. — is not so easy to come by.
Candlish started looking around the Front Range and in early December found Cascade Tek’s second location at 1530 Vista View Drive, in the Vista Commercial Center. “We’re at just over a million dollars just to get the building ready to run,” Candlish said last week.
The price tag for copper alone was more than $100,000, he said. The building needed a major utility upgrade, which required more than 15,000 feet of wiring. A new floor, roll-up doors on the interior and a custom-built cooling tower were also among the upgrades.
Cascade Tek is leasing its 15,525-square-foot building, but if things go as planned, that won’t last long, Candlish said. “We got a five-year lease with an option to buy in 18 months,” he said. “And that is our plan. If the business takes off, we’re just going to buy the building.” The company will have four employees to start, including Thompson, who’ll be doing sales for the company.
“One of the technicians we hired was 17 years at StorageTek (working at the ATP),” Candlish said. “He’s flying to Oregon next week to train with me for a week.” There are few industries that Cascade Tek doesn’t serve, Candlish said. For example, a medical device company wants to make sure its products arrive in perfect working order after they’re shipped. So it will send Cascade Tek a wrapped piece of equipment and the testing company will expose it to hazards it could encounter while being shipped, such as extreme humidity or sea air.
“A couple of days in there can simulate a year in a sea environment,” Candlish said, pointing to what he called a “salt fog” machine. The food industry is another common customer, Candlish said, as are aerospace companies. Ford is a client, he said, and now the company will be able to send its products to Colorado for testing, rather than Oregon, saving the Detroit automaker some shipping costs. The few East Coast customers Cascade Tek has will save money in the same manner.
Cascade Tek also has struck what Candlish called a “strategic alliance” with EMC Integrity, a testing company a block and a half away, at 1736 Vista View Drive, that does electromagnetic compatibility testing. “Our marketing attracts EMI people, and the same for Vince (Greb) — his marketing attracts environmental testing people,” Candlish said. Greb is president of EMC Integrity, which he founded in 1994. His company, which employs 10 people, serves commercial and military-aerospace clients.
Greb said Cascade Tek’s arrival coincides with his company’s recent expansion of 6,500 square feet, bringing his company’s total square footage to 17,200. “I think they saw it as a great opportunity, and it’s a nice little addition to this business park for us,” Greb said. “We offer complementary services. They’re not going to get into EMI (testing) and we’re not going to get into environmental, so it works out well for both of us.”
Tony Kindelspire can be reached at 303-684-5291 or tkindelspire@times-call.com.
