Industrial Strength: On The Wire In Leominster
Electro Wire Inc., assembles and distributes products that people and businesses depend on so greatly that they may be taken utterly for granted.
But the wire and cable that power the MBTA's trains and public transit trains all over the country are in those trains because of Electro Wire. Transportation authorities and the locomotive industry are Electro Wire's biggest customers.
"Many people think locomotives are diesel powered, and they are, but they're diesel-electric," noted Kevin McNamara, the company's vice president.
Fully Assembled
Electro Wire is based in Chicago, but 95 of its 140 employees work in Leominster. The company first set up shop in Massachusetts in Auburn in 1984. Ten years later, the company moved to Leominster and now occupies 150,000 square feet of warehouse, distribution and manufacturing space.
Next to the transportation industry, Electro Wire's biggest customer is the telecommunications industry.
Electro Wire doesn't manufacture wire and cable itself, it distributes and redistributes specialty cable and wire to pretty much any major original equipment manufacturer (OEM). In recent years, the company has begun manufacturing custom wire and cable assemblies.
The colorful, intricate wire harnesses inside your computers, inside today's high-tech telecommunications equipment, inside the equipment your doctors depend on, in the equipment used by the military and in the machines that manufacture goods are assembled in Leominster at Electro Wire.
Assembling those components is a task that many major OEMs do not want to perform themselves these days, and about 65 of Electro Wire's employees in Leominster work in the company's assembly division piecing together wires, cables, connectors and terminals.
All the wires inside your computer are protected by a metal housing, and if your computer is a Dell, that housing was probably made in the Jytek Industrial Park at F&M Tool and Die Co. Inc.
F&M is well known for making plastic pieces for toys and games like Battleship, Candyland, Simon and others. But as its name suggests, F&M is not just a plastics manufacturer, it's a high-tech tool and die company that produces a wide variety of products, including computer housings for Dell. And the company's founder, Francis Gasbarro, started the company in 1974, and it's still owned by the family today.
Since F&M started, it has grown steadily, and today its high-tech machine tool and plastics manufacturing equipment occupies 31,000 square feet and runs 24 hours per day making products for not only Dell and Milton Bradley, but Graco Children's Products, Staples, Silent Systems, Plastican and Manta Product Development.
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