PORT ANGELES — A national industrial technology company with its roots in Port Angeles has been recognized for its phenomenal growth.
MagnaDrive Corp., which is Bellevue-based but maintains its national sales office at 116 W. Eighth St. in Port Angeles, was recognized by Inc. magazine as one of the nation’s fastest-growing companies for 2004.
Inc. ranks MagnaDrive 392nd among its annual top 500 firms and 22nd in the region that includes Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho.
Deloitte & Touche USA LLP, the accounting firm which compiles a ranking of technology companies based on revenue growth, names MagnaDrive 98th in its Technology Fast 500.
How fast? An average 94 percent growth a year, and 2,485 percent since 1999.
That’s right: Two thousand four hundred eighty-five percent.
And though the company’s plant is based in Bellevue, the seeds of its success and roots of its growth are in Port Angeles, says Steve Maxwell, national sales manager.
Inaugural systems
It was in Port Angeles that MagnaDrive installed some of the first systems to show potential customers — at wastewater Pump Station No. 4 on the city’s west side and in the sewage treatment plant on the east side.
Other Peninsula installations include the Nippon Paper Industries USA Co. Ltd. mill in Port Angeles and Portac Inc. in Beaver.
“It all started here,” says Maxwell.
“Now that we’re worldwide, it’s very important that the city of Port Angeles is recognized for what has been done.”
MagnaDrive has exclusive rights to magnetic technology developed by Port Angeles inventor Karl “Jerry” Lamb.
The company’s couplings and adjustable-speed drives replace drive shafts and bearings between motors and pumps, blowers, centrifuges and fans.
Its target industries include mining, electricity generating, oil and gas production-transportation-heating/ventilation and air conditioning, irrigation, wastewater treatment, and pulp and paper manufacturing.
In a typical ordinary situation, a motor uses a drive shaft to tun a fan. The motor vibrates, and the shaft transmits the vibrations to the fan, damaging its blades and wearing out its bearings.
In a MagnaDrive application, motor and fan remain apart. They are linked by a powerful magnetic field across an 1/8-inch gap.
There are no bearings, no friction, and the technology produces other savings in money and energy, Maxwell says.
More information is available at www.magnadrive.com. For an online tutorial, go to www.magnadriveeducation.com.
