FAA contract backs up growth at MaeTec Power
For everyone’s safety, the power at air traffic control centers can never go out.
To that end, the Federal Aviation Administration plans to spend as much as $17.5 million with Perinton firm MaeTec Power Inc. over the next five years to replace massive batteries at 25 sites around the United States.
Those batteries — the backbone to the backup power supplies for air traffic control centers — are also a foundation of MaeTec’s growing business.
MaeTec specializes in backup power equipment, particularly for the telecommunications industry, such as huge, 3t-ton DC batteries or power plants that convert the current to AC. Those battery systems typically are the stopgap between utility power going out and a backup generator kicking in, company Vice President James Allen said.
Allen and President Mark A. Miller, both coming from the DC power industry, started MaeTec in 2003. Since then, it has grown to employ 18 people, most of them service technicians scattered across the country.
The turmoil in the telecommunications industry at the start of the decade proved to be a boon for MaeTec, as the company was able to buy surplus equipment cheaply, Miller said.
For much of the company’s history, growth came largely by word of mouth spread by its existing customer base in the cable, telephone and cell phone industries. MaeTec now has projects in 40 states, with its backup systems ranging in power from 400 amps to 10,000.
And while the bulk of its work remains in the telecom industry, it is starting to diversify into working with insurance companies, banks and government agencies.
Revenues in 2009 will exceed $3 million, and the FAA work will nearly double that in 2010, according to the company.
“We don’t spend a lot of money on things that don’t generate revenue for us,” Miller said as he sat in the small, wood-paneled Perinton office that is MaeTec’s headquarters.
While the company has warehouse space attached to its offices, most of the equipment for jobs is shipped directly from manufacturers to job sites. There, MaeTec technicians will do most of the repair, replacement or installation work and then ship their specialized tools to their next job site.
“Our business model is to not have inventory,” Miller said. “We never want to see our tools in the warehouse — then they’re not earning us money.”
