COILED IN CALLERY
CALLERY — From Venetian blinds to refrigerator doors to car bumpers, steel can be twisted, bent and shaped into an infinite number of sizes for as many different uses.
From the time steel exits the mill as a massive coil to the time it becomes a household product, it must be precisely leveled, cut and sized.
Herr-Voss Stamco has made that precision its business by manufacturing machines that process coiled steel and other metals.
"Probably everything made of metal in your house could have come across the floor of Herr-Voss Stamco," said Gary Hart, company president.
The company, headquartered along Main Street in the borough, was founded by Roy Ferree in 1961.
Hart signed on in 1966 as a machinist, one of only about 20 employees.
At that time, coil processing equipment was a $2 million industry with a third the number of products now being manufactured.
Now 62, Hart oversees an $80 million to $90 million company with seven locations, including one in Mars and two in Beaver County.
Each location is situated in a rural, often farming community, with the exception of the west office in Redlands, Calif., he said.
As a family oriented operation, Hart said many plant operations are shared by family members, with fathers and sons, brothers and sisters working side by side.
Hart also recognizes that three quarters of his own life has been spent with Herr-Voss Stamco.
"If you want to live off the garden, you have to live in it," he said, quoting his late grandfather.Herr-Voss employs 334 manufacturers, engineers, field service technicians and salespeople, and more than half, or 188, work in Butler County, he said.Each Herr-Voss manufacturing job creates three jobs outside the process just in Butler, Beaver and Lawrence counties, Hart said.The Callery complex includes a 33,300-square-foot office building and an 89,300-square-foot manufacturing facility.The plant manufactures several lines of capital equipment for processing aluminum, cold rolled steel, galvanized steel, painted steel, copper, brass hot rolled steel, and stainless and silicon steels.The cut-to-length machine, one of the three most popular, efficiently cuts steel to any desired length.Slitters make thin, even cuts in a large piece of steel for creating Venetian or vertical blinds, among other items.Precision and tension levelers correct shape defects such as curvature, buckling or waving often caused at the producer mill."What Herr-Voss is known for worldwide is leveling," Hart said.Levelers can be built to handle virtually any gauge of metal, up to ¾ of an inch thick, and contain 17 to 19 different rolls to adjust the metal and remove distortions, according to the Web site, www.gen-world.com.Automatic positioning and calibration can be incorporated into any leveler to customize the process.Machines are routinely shipped across North America via truck. Foreign orders are shipped using ocean freighters, Hart said.While many manufacturing companies buy machinery directly from Herr-Voss Stamco, he said orders for steel to be cut or leveled by Herr-Voss equipment, and then sent back, are not unusual.Herr-Voss also is well known for service and maintenance, even on machines made by other manufacturers, he said.The company services equipment for other mills such as AK Steel and Allegheny Ludlum Steel, headquartered in Pittsburgh."Our big business is service," Hart said.
In addition to routine maintenance, field service technicians can help train machine operators, identify problems, install new parts and calibrate all makes and models of coil processing equipment in North and South America, Europe and Asia."It's a global world now," Hart said. "We no longer have the luxury of just competing in the United States. To go to the world market we have to present top-quality equipment."That equipment must include current technology, Hart said.At one time, Herr-Voss Stamco machinery operated using gears, and until 15 years ago, coils were processed using hydraulics, with water as the main catalyst for keeping things moving smoothly.Now, machinery is controlled by electricity or computerization, which has reduced the number of operators from six to one or two, Hart said.Regardless, the company's ownership firm, Grey Mountain Partners of Boulder, Colo., plans to grow the company within the existing product lines, as well as future acquisitions, Hart said."Herr-Voss has a tremendous future to come," he said.Metal Center News, a national trade publication, named Herr-Voss Stamco first on its list of the top 20 equipment brands in May 2007.The list was compiled through an informal poll of service center executives to measure the relative level of brand awareness achieved in the market."You can have the best machine tools — we make them — but they're nothing without the employees," Hart said.While praising his work force, Hart admitted that attracting skilled workers is an industry-wide struggle.Herr-Voss used to appeal to a lot of students from vocational-technical schools, particularly in Beaver County, he said. However, many schools have canceled programs related to machine tools, and demand for machinists is becoming high.Herr-Voss will train new employees to do jobs in the company, Hart said, but training takes time and money.Undeterred, he said Herr-Voss Stamco will continue to be a leader in the coil processing industry and among its employees."The future of Herr-Voss, to me, is the employees," Hart said. "We have a tremendous amount of employees dedicated to this company."
