Moving It In Newington
At one end of an industrial park in Newington, an old company makes very big and heavy things. At the other end, another old firm makes small and light things. Beyond the fact both companies are based in the same area, they share one additional connection: Their products help move something from one point to another.
The big heavy things are bridges, specifically the steel road bridges that are built by International Bridge and Iron Co. at 90 Day St. The 40-person firm is owned by Joseph Bachta, who bought the plant that was then-known as Standard Structural Steel.
The factory, in one form or another, has been making bridges since the 1950s.
Most of its bridges are installed in roadways in the Northeast, Bachta said. Over the years, the factory has churned out quite a few of the spans that commuters in Connecticut pass over each day. The Gold Star Memorial Bridge from New London to Groton, for instance, was built in that Newington factory. More recently, many of the bridges installed on the I-95 overpass in Bridgeport were built in Newington as well.
In Boston, much of the bridgework spanning the central artery was built in Newington as well.
Bachta said the company spits out anywhere from 6,000 to 10,000 tons of bridges a year, Bachta said.
Lighter Fare
The small light things come out of the Muir Envelope factory at Francis Avenue, just to the corner of Day Street.
In the jargon of the lithographic word, the seven-person, family-owned company is what’s known as a trade printer; Essentially, it makes hundreds of thousands of envelopes each year for print shops all over New England, New York and New Jersey.
“The key word is ‘trade,’” said co-owner Danny Muir. “Somebody off the street could not come in and order envelopes. We would send them to a small print shop — which in turn probably take the order right back to us to print it. But you’d never see our label on it.”
Muir Envelope is a family business. John Muir founded it in 1970 in West Hartford before moving the factory to Newington in 1975. John previously was in business with his brother, Dave, who owns Muir Printing in West Hartford. It’s now run by John’s sons, Danny and Andrew, and Andrew’s wife, Angela. The president, however, is not a Muir; It’s Paul Klett, who has worked for Muir Envelope since its inception.
One of the more interesting aspects of the Muir Envelope factory are the machines it uses. Several of the machines are modified presses originally designed to make punch cards for early IBM computers.
“They designed a piece of equipment that was cutting-edge in its day,” Danny Muir said. “It could make 60,000 cards an hour. From there, someone said, ‘well, those are about the size of envelopes so let’s see what it can do?’”
Another press dates from the early 1900s and is used to perforate envelopes.
In the world of printing, where so many companies constantly upgrade to newer and more expensive machines, Muir attributes its success to its reliance on older — and already paid-for-- equipment.
“A lot of printers are going out of business because of high costs,” Muir said. “Fortunately, we’re very fiscally strict. That’s what’s kept us around.”
Contributing writer Ken St. Onge blogs about manufacturing in Connecticut at NutmegMachine.com
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