Getting A Bump From The Grind In Holliston | Esco Tool in expansion mode, takes 60,000 square feet
Sometimes, a machining job is so big and complex that it can’t be brought to a machine shop. Sometimes, projects are undertaken that require parts to be machined after they’ve been partially installed.
In these situations, companies have been calling on Esco Tool for decades. The company recently moved from Medfield to the New England Industrial Park in Holliston, where it bought and refurbished a 60,000-square-foot facility to call home.
The facility is six times the size of the company’s former home in Medfield and larger still than the Needham facility it occupied until the early 1980s. Matt Brennan, Esco’s president, said the company’s new Holliston digs are bigger than it really needs, but the company expects further expansion in the future and will rent out a portion of the building until that day comes.
The need for more space has come as Esco broadens the variety of products and services it offers and as the projects for which the company’s tools are used become larger and greater in number.
Mill Hogs
Esco makes portable “end prep” tools called “Mill Hogs” used for machining the ends of pipes in preparation for welding. The company’s main customers are power plants and other industries that weld pipes used in high-temperature or high-pressure environments such as oil refineries, oil wells and others.
Brennan explained that Esco got its start in 1954 working on nuclear submarines. The U.S. Navy needed certain piping used in pressure nozzles prepped for welding but needed those components machined after they were on board the sub, Brennan said.
The Winchester-based company then known as Evans Supply Co. was the answer. They provided the portable tools necessary to get the Navy’s job done. The applications for which Esco’s tools are best-suited tend to be related to the power industry, or any application where high temperatures and high pressure requires precision, high-strength welds, like in a boiler. At major installations like oil refineries or rigs, the giant piping set for welding is simply too large to be moved back and forth to machine shops.
Likewise, in other applications, like power plants, a project may simply have a sheer volume of piping that’s so great that it’s unfeasible to move it. That’s when companies buy Esco tools.
But since buying Esco in 1975, the Brennan family has realized that it can’t rely only on power companies and other clients and contractors to buy their tools.
These days, Esco also rents and distributes tools around the world.
“As we’ve developed, we’ve paid closer attention to the marketplace,” Brennan explained.
“We did very little rental in the ‘70s. Now it probably accounts for 50 percent of our business.”
Got news for our Industrial Strength column? E-mail Managing Editor mbrown@wbjournal.com.
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