A tenet of economic development is business recruitment and retention, or BRE. The way BRE is conducted is largely through the activity of business visitations. As part of this ongoing effort, Director of Planning and Development Bill Hawkins, and the town’s economic development consultant, Kevin Bielmeier, arranged a tour of Metal Finish Equipment & Supply Co., Inc., at 19 Kenny Roberts Drive in Suffield’s Mach One Industrial Park. The Manufacturer of MetFin Shotblast Systems, this Suffield-based, global company exemplifies how advanced manufacturing is alive and well in Connecticut.
The tour was led by President Rob Rush along with Nancy Austermann, and covered a great deal of the 22,647 square-foot facility, which doubled in size in 2012. In simple terms, MetFin fabricates equipment to clean steel for a number of industries, including aerospace, automotive and infrastructure such as bridges. Each piece of equipment is custom-built for every client, soup-to-nuts. Some of their customers are local, such as Electric Boat in Groton and ELG Utica Alloys in Hartford, while others are as distant as Spain and China.
Currently, MetFin employs 29 full-time workers with a variety of skills including welding, assembly, fabrication and other mechanical skills. They plan to hire more in the next few years and will be on the lookout for workers at all levels, with an emphasis on skilled workers to build their machines.
To learn more about MetFin, contact Nancy Austermann at nancy@metfin.com. For more information on economic development in Suffield, contact Kevin Bielmeier at kbielmeier@cerc.com.