Industrial Strength: Deep Freeze
Shrewsbury's Memorial Drive is home to eclectic mix of businesses
Folks on their way by the Memorial Drive Business Park in Shrewsbury can really only see one business from Memorial Drive (Route 140) itself, and the signs at the entrance to the park are quite small.
But if you take the time to read the sign, how can you resist finding out a little bit more about companies with names like Ditch Witch, DasGip Biotools and Macomber Cryogenics?
I see the word cryogenics in a business name, and I think, "Whoa, these are the guys who froze Ted Williams." But you won't find number 9's frozen head in a bowling bag at Macomber Cryogenics. They aren't in the business of freezing deceased sports legends. But they are in the business of making sure very cold gases make it from holding tanks to perform their intended purposes safely, efficiently and quietly. Macomber provides and services specialized piping and fittings to the industrial gas industry and to businesses that use industrial gases.
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Harry Schaller, the company's owner, said the majority of Macomber's business comes from the industrial gas industry. But being in Central Massachusetts has been fortuitous for the four-man company in recent years as the state's biotechnology and high-tech sectors have grown. Many of those companies have samples to keep cold with liquid nitrogen, or tests to run using argon, oxygen or helium. And the tanks and fittings and other systems they use are serviced by Macomber.
For a while, EMC in Hopkinton was Macomber's single biggest customer. The company also does work for Genzyme, Biogen Idec, Aspen Aerogels, 3Com and others.
Macomber does some manufacturing, subassemblies, for example. But most of its work is done at the customers' locations.
The company started in 1978 in Westborough and over the years has called that town, Worcester and Shrewsbury home. It moved to Memorial Drive about a year and a half ago.
At 167 Memorial Dr. is the headquarters of Ditch Witch New England, a distributor for the Oklahoma-based company that makes underground construction equipment. The company employs 15 in Shrewsbury, and has pioneered some pretty wild technology that can dig trenches for pipes and utilities under roadways without disturbing the surface, but the folks at the Shrewsbury Ditch Witch distributor say that particular piece of equipment is underused. Think about that next time you're stuck in construction traffic, and give some thought to calling that project manager or your town's top official to ask why the street is being dug up unnecessarily. The folks at Ditch Witch say it doesn't cost that much more to keep the surface intact while laying gas lines or water mains.
A big part of Ditch Witch's business is sales to rental companies that rent or lease Ditch Witch equipment to contractors and construction companies. At Memorial Drive, Ditch Witch and United Rentals, the largest tool and heavy equipment rental company in the country, have struck up just such a symbiotic relationship. Ditch Witch and United Rentals were actually two of the first businesses to locate in the park about five years ago.
DasGip Biotools is a German lab equipment manufacturer that helps biology laboratories "express your cells." The location at Memorial Drive has four employees, and distributes equipment from Shrewsbury to all of DasGip's customers east of the Rocky Mountains.
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