🔒Aerospace protection: Spencer manufacturing startup projects to reach hundreds of millions in sales by 2030

Without the iPhone 4s, Spencer manufacturer Blueshift likely never would have existed. When Apple was developing the iPhone version in the early 2010s, Garrett Poe, Blueshift co-founder and chief technology officer, was working for a material science company tasked with creating a solution to the iPhone’s overheating issue when recording videos.

By the time Poe had developed a prototype, Apple had moved on. “They're like, ‘Oh yeah, this is great. We already solved this problem three months ago,” said Poe. Poe then teamed with Tim Burbey, Blueshift’s co-founder and president, to license the technology from Poe’s former company and in 2013 launched their own manufacturing firm centered around thermal protection for the aerospace industry. More than 10 years later, Blueshift sells hundreds of thousands of feet of its thermal protection film a year and is projected to reach hundreds of millions in sales by 2030. What started as a small startup is growing into an internationally-in-demand brand with applications far outside the aerospace industry.

Commercialization hurdles

Poe and Burbey abandoned their original proprietary thermal protection patent to develop their own intellectual property. Now, Blueshift produces two main product types, AeroZero and PhaseBlue technologies.

Both use aerogel, a material known as the lightest solid in the world. The AeroZero line consists of sheets of ultra-thin thermal insulation material to protect from overheating in the extreme temperatures of space. PhaseBlue offers circuit-board materials for devices like antennas. While the duo originally thought bringing their Blueshift technology to market would be straightforward, the road to production turned out to be anything but smooth. “It's really easy to make something in the lab, and really easy to make 10 or 20 things in the lab. Making something a million times is so hard,” said Poe. “Testing is one thing, and then the manufacturing is another.”

Blueshift ended up needing to design a new piece of machinery to manufacture its aerogel rolls, spending more than $10 million in manufacturing development costs, a figure that is merely a rounding error compared to Blueshift’s cost of creating a prototype. The company also develops unique thermal protection material for individual customers. Customers basically roast Blueshift materials to see the types of heat the product can withstand, said Poe. “We essentially came up with an in-house marshmallow roaster,” he said. When subjected to heat of more than 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit, Blueshift material holds up for 30-40 minutes, up from 10 minutes. “It's amazing how well it works,” said Poe. In the past four years, Blueshift has commercialized its technology. “It took that long to get it to a point where it was working the way it was supposed to work, produced at scale,” said Burbey.

Beyond aerospace

To support that commercialization, Poe and Burbey sold the majority stake of Blueshift to 44 Maple Group, a Worcester-based portfolio management company that also owns Spencer manufacturer Flexcon.

44 Maple brought on Mike Foley as CEO in 2022, in part to scale Blueshift to where it is today, selling hundreds of thousands of protection rolls a year throughout the U.S., Europe, Asia, and Oceania. The possible applications for Blueshift technologies are rapidly expanding, Foley said. Blueshift has medical customers who use the company’s thermal protections systems during cauterization of wounds in order to contain the heat from touching other areas of the body. Another area of exploration is in high-speed weaponry, Foley said. As U.S. adversaries develop high-speed nuclear weapons, U.S. interceptors must travel even faster. But devices heat up when traveling at high speed, thus, wrapping interceptors in Blueshift thermal protection will allow them to safely travel at the speeds needed to protect the country, Foley said. Blueshift is exploring working with the dozens of companies developing electric helicopters – known as electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles – to prevent their lithium batteries from catching fire. “Just imagine that you can see flying drones with the same batteries with the same potential for fire,” said Foley. While the idea of flying drones big enough for humans may seem far-fetched, an eVTOL airport is already mostly completed in Dubai. “It's never the path you think to understand customers, and manufacture what they need,” said Poe. “It's been very, very fun and way harder than I thought it would ever be.” Mica Kanner-Mascolo is a staff writer at Worcester Business Journal, who primarily covers the healthcare, manufacturing, and higher education industries.