Answering The Call For Power
Answering The Call For Power
Espey Mfg & Electronics Corp. Introduces the MAC-500-Series power inverter.
posted February 16 2012
The MAC-500 is a versatile power inverter with the capability to convert 24/28V DC input to 120V AC with 60Hz True Sine Wave output. The convenience outlet is typically used for laptops, IPODS, Cell Phone or any device needing 120V AC input.
The MAC-500 can be modified for any type installation and configured with any type input or output connector which makes it one of the world’s most adaptable 24/28V DC to 120V AC power inverter.
The MAC-500 has been designed for rugged and harsh conditions; it is both water resistant and dust proof.
Suitable applications are Transit Rail, Off Highway Vehicles, Construction Vehicles, Service Vehicles, Military Ground Vehicles and Marine applications. Although designed with these punishing environments in mind the MAC-500 can be used for any application requiring 120V AC power with a 24/28 V DC input.
For more information please go to MAC-500.
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CEO/CFO Interview - Mark St. Pierre
posted June 9 2011
Having Been Around for 80 Years, Espey Manufacturing & Electronics Corp., which has a Long History of Stable Profitability Providing Power Electronics to the Defense Industry is Now Focused on Growth
Company Profile: Espey Mfg. & Electronics Corp is a Power Electronics Design and Original Equipment Manufacturing (OEM) company with a long history of devel-oping and delivering highly reliable products for use in military and severe environment applications. All design, manufacturing, and testing is performed in our 150,000+ square foot facility located at 233 Ballston Ave, Saratoga Springs, New York. Espey is a small business that is ISO 9001:2008 certified and publicly traded on NYSE Amex (ESP). Espey has been in business for 80 years and continues to be successful through the design and manufacture of new and improved products by using cutting edge and emerging technologies.
Espey services include design and development to specification, build to print, design services, design studies, environmental testing services, metal fabrication, and painting services, and development of automatic testing equipment. Espey manufacturing is vertically integrated and will produce individual components (including in-ductors), populate printed circuit boards, fabricate metalwork, paint, wind magnetics, qualify, and fully test items in house; mechanically, electrically and environmentally.
Espey’s primary products are power supplies, power converters, filters, power transformers, magnetic components, power distribution equipment, ups systems, antennas and high power radar systems. The applications of these products include AC and DC locomotives, shipboard power, shipboard radar, airborne power, ground-based radar, and ground mobile power.
Espey is on the eligible list of contrac-tors on the United States Department of Defense and generally is automatically solicited by such agencies for procurement needs falling within the major classes of products produced by the company. Espey contracts with the Federal Government under cage code 20950 as Espey Mfg. & Electronics Corp. and cage code 98675 as Espey Mfg. & Electronics Corp., Saratoga Industries Division.
Interview conducted by: Lynn Fosse,
Senior Editor CEOCFOinterviews.com
CEOCFO: Mr. St. Pierre, you have been with Espey Manufacturing and Electronics for almost two years; what attracted you to the company?
Mr. St. Pierre: What attracted me to Espey Manufacturing and Electronics was primarily, its longevity. Espey is a company that has not been on the industry’s radar, yet it has been around for eighty years. I wondered how a company could survive and prosper that long and be so little known. Espey is largely unknown except by a handful of very loyal long-term defense contractors. Therefore, I was intrigued by an opportunity to take a company with that kind of his-tory and grow it. It had been stable and steady, but had not grown over the years. For me it was an attractive opportunity to take this profitable steady business, make a growth en-gine out of it, get it on the map and get it recognized for what it is.
CEOCFO: As CEO for over a year, what have you done to change Espy, and what are you still working on in that area?
Mr. St. Pierre: There are many areas of focus for Espey, but the primary one is external. In other words, building a sales and marketing force is critical to getting the name out there and to bring new opportunities into the company, so we are hard at work on that. In fact, we just hired a Director of Sales and Marketing to lead that ef-fort. He will in turn bolster the sales force nationally and even internationally where we have a couple of inter-national reps or agents. That is prior ity one, but while that is going on and parallel to that, there are a bunch of internal initiatives like the lean initiative. For example, we are focused on making our factory efficient by removing non value-added activities throughout our operation. Thirdly, a strategic plan has been developed and that has for the first time in the company provided a comprehensible strategic vision that looks out five years and sees where opportunities are and where the company can focus on its core and leverage those for successful growth.
View pdf for complete interview...
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Top-secret work at Saratoga Springs electronics company mostly for military
posted February 14 2011
SARATOGA SPRINGS - One hundred and seventy people are busy at work inside the gated compound on Ballston Avenue where secret work has been going on for the past 50 years.
“It’s a very big kept secret. To many people, it’s a great mystery,” said Mark St. Pierre, president and CEO of Espey Manufacturing & Electronics Corp. “That’s not by design; it’s just the way it happened.”
Espey is an electronics manufacturer specializing in power-related devices. But about 80 percent of the company’s nearly $30 million in annual contracting work is conducted for the military.
“We’re much more than that big gray building on the corner in a resort town,” St. Pierre said. “We’re doing defense work and valuable work for the nation. Our devices end up in radars and radios and all kinds of communication gear.
“We’re the people behind the scenes from a power point-of-view,” St. Pierre said. “We deliver power solutions enabling all these fancy technologies to work.”
Inside the 150,000+-square-foot facility, the company conducts work on systems that will be used by the military on land, on sea and in the air. The systems are installed on everything from nuclear submarines to surface ships, including fixed-wing aircraft, helicopters and wheeled vehicles.
“These things have been around, but they become digitized, or made electronic. That’s where we come in. We can take an old howitzer and make it extremely accurate by putting a digital fire control system on it. It’s a system that electronically tells the gunner, or the forward spotter: This is the weather. This is the air density. This is the altitude. This is the angle and azimuth you should use. You can drop that shell in the living room of an insurgent hiding in Afghanistan,” he said.
Testing such technology is not cheap. St. Pierre estimated it costs the plant about $250,000 a year in electricity bills alone.
And from a contractor’s standpoint, St. Pierre said he believes Espey is somewhat protected from proposed Defense Department budget cuts because of the type of work the firm does.
“You always have to be concerned, but we’re positioned well. I really think we’re going to be immune to those kind of cuts,” said St. Pierre, who was named Espey’s president last year.
“Things that are in communications and radar generally don’t get cut very often. Ground vehicles, which are essential to the Army’s modernization program — as well as the upgrading and modernization of existing ships — we’re on those, which I think immunizes us against wholesale cuts,” he said. “More power consumption means more opportunity for companies like Espey.”
U.S. Rep. Scott Murphy, D-Glens Falls, toured the facility in May and called Espey an important small business in upstate New York.
“I’ve been proud to work with them as they’ve helped to make our local economy strong and our country safe,” Murphy said.
Compared with places like GlobalFoundries, which is expected to create specialized computer chip manufacturing jobs after it opens in 2012 in Malta’s Luther Forest Technology Campus, St. Pierre said the 170 workers he employs range from high school graduates who are taught to assemble electronic components to employees who have earned doctorates.
St. Pierre said 20 percent of the work at Espey involves “high-end commercial work,” such as making the equipment that can manage power systems for locomotives. The bulk of the company’s work, however, continues to be for the military.
“About 80 percent of what we do is military, most of which comes from federal funding, one way or another,” St. Pierre said.
“Although we sell a little bit directly to governments — including the U.S. government and foreign governments, under license — most of what we sell is as a subcontractor, and that number is ultimately funded, indirectly, by the federal government,” he said. “It might go through companies like Lockheed-Martin, or Raytheon, or General Dynamics, but the contracts are typically government contracts paid for by the taxpayer.”
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