Fitchburg Company To Install $5.5M Power Plant
Photo/Brandon Butler
ENERGETIC SAVINGS: Simonds International in Worcester plans to install a $5.5 million cogeneration plant. Pictured at the Fitchburg facility are Kenneth Mayer, left, director of materials, and Ray Martino, right, CEO.
Walking through the expansive 450,000-square-foot manufacturing headquarters of Simonds International in Fitchburg, one can only imagine this facility bustling with more than 700 workers almost four decades ago.
Today, the saw-making plant employs about 150 workers. But plans to install a $5.5-million new power generation facility at the plant could help the factory regain some of those jobs that have been lost over the past few decades, according to company officials.
Change Of Plans
Simonds, which is a 130-year-old company, uses a massive amount of heat and electricity to make its products. Large furnaces create the heat to soften steel so it can be molded into various saws and tools.
Doing business in Massachusetts is not cheap, president and CEO Ray Martino freely admits. Electricity, for example, is almost one-third more expensive at the company’s Fitchburg plant compared to its other plants in Oregon and Alabama.
“We really needed to find a way to make the plant more competitive within the company,” Martino said.
But the company’s access to a skilled and dedicated workforce in Fitchburg has fueled a desire to keep the Fitchburg plant open.
“After 170 years you develop some pretty deep roots in a community,” said David McKeehan, president of the North Central Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce.
About five years ago, Martino began researching various ways to cut costs at the Fitchburg plant. The initial idea was to install a large-scale biomass power generation plant, which uses wood chips to produce electricity.
The company was in the midst of securing approval to install the plant when a damming report about the carbon footprint of such plants drastically changed the company’s plans.
With greater “political instability” over the state’s willingness to approve new biomass plants, according to Martino, the company changed course quickly.
Instead, Simonds is now moving forward with installing a natural gas cogeneration power plant that will produce enough electricity to power the entire building. The internal combustion engine, powered by natural gas, produces electricity with heat as a byproduct.
Excess Capacity
The system, developed in Germany by G2 CEnergy, which is headquartered in Florida, will fit in four trailer-truck-sized container boxes and will produce about 1.8 megawatts of electricity, more than the 1.2 to 1.4 megawatts the company is currently uses.
That leaves room for Simonds to expand in Fitchburg, Martino said.
Officials in Fitchburg couldn’t be happier.
“It’s an unusual dedication the Simonds folks have to the area,” McKeehan said. “There are a lot of people that would have just thrown their hands up, but they really wanted to stay here.”
When the plans for the biomass plant got nixed, it brought back some anxious memories.
Munksjo Paper Co., which also has operations in Fitchburg, proposed to install a biomass plant at its campus a few years ago, but when that became unfeasible, the plant laid off most of its workers and has effectively shut down.
Now, Martino said the company will be able to produce electricity and heat for about 10 cents per kilowatt hour, which brings it in line with the company’s other plants around the country.
That compares to the 15.6 cents per kilowatt hour the company is currently paying.
Installation of the system has already begun and is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter.
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