Pittsburgh : Innovation & Job News

The door is open to double the jobs at a new plant under construction in Burgettstown, near the Ohio border.
 
Hörmann Flexon,  a huge German door manufacturer, broke ground earlier this month on a 68,000-square-foot facility at Starpointe Business Park. Alice Permigiani, the company's marketing director, says the state-of-the-art plant will open next summer and will eventually employ about 65, up from 30 at Hörmann's Leetsdale plant, which will close. The new plant could eventually grow as large as 220,000 square feet, accommodating a workforce of 100.
 
Gov. Tom Corbett spoke at the July 9 groundbreaking, along with Washington County Commissioner Lawrence O. Maggi who the Pittsburgh Business Times quoted as noting, "People think we're ground zero here for oil and gas, but we want to be ground zero for manufacturing as well."
 
August Hörmann began making steel doors in his metalworking shop in Germany before World War II. Today the company is a fourth-generation family business with operations around the world. In 2007, Hörmann acquired Flexon, a maker of industrial doors and related products in Leetsdale since 1979.
 
Hörmann Flexon's Pennsylvania operation manufactures high-perfomance industrial and commercial doors, Permigiani says. Last year, the company implemented a new visual management program that has boosted productivity by 30 percent. Earlier this year, the company rolled out four, new, high-speed, roll-up doors designed to meet the needs of specialized industries, including clean rooms, coolers and food processing areas.
 
Source: Alice Permigiani, Hörmann Flexon
Writer: Elise Vider

One environmental challenge of extracting natural gas from the Marcellus Shale has been treatment of the "flowback water" that rises to the surface during the fracking process.
 
Now CONSOL Energy,  based in Pittsburgh, has made an initial $500,000 investment to acquire a minority stake in Epiphany Solar Water Systems, a small company in New Castle. CONSOL will also provide one of its Marcellus gas well locations in Greene County to test Epiphany's proprietary, solar-powered, water purification system. Epiphany has doubled its staff to 10 to accommodate the project.
 
"During this pilot test," says Tom Joseph, Epiphany's founder and CEO, "Epiphany will work to determine the potential of our technology to lower the cost of energy needed to process wastewater by using alternative energy, reduce the risk of waste disposal by processing water on-site and recovering the resultant water, salt, minerals and disposable waste materials, minimize the volume of materials that must be transported off-site for safe disposal, and reduce the amount of truck traffic associated with this aspect of development."
 
"This is the tip of the iceberg," says Epiphany's Jaclene Joseph. "Although huge in terms of specific industry potential, Epiphany's technology is applicable to virtually all facets of water supply regardless of industry."
 
Founded in 2009, Epiphany's goal is to make solar cost-competitive with conventionally powered water purification systems. Epiphany also runs Project Eviive, a non-profit whose mission is to provide water desalination/purification systems throughout the developing world.
 
"Growth in the commercial sector," says Joseph, "will allow funding of units for deployment to underserved, underdeveloped nations."
 
Source: Jaclene Joseph, Epiphany Solar Water Systems
Writer: Elise Vider
 
 

Source: Anthony Horbal, Seegrid; Brian Dworkin, Castle Co-Packers 

Concurrent Technologies Corporation (CTC) has landed a five-year defense contract to provide sophisticated communications systems for the Navy. The $230 million contract, awarded to CTC and three other organizations, will involve CTC’s experts and labs in Johnstown and could add more than 60 high-tech jobs at the company nationwide over the next six to 12 months, says Lou Mondello, program director for CTC's Special Missions Solutions.
 
The overall project is to provide “Naval Networking and Joint Base Services” for the U.S. Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center Atlantic in Charleston, South Carolina.The center is one of three major Navy acquisition commands, delivering high-end information technology products and services to naval fleets and other Defense Department stakeholders.
 
CTC’s role will “include fabrication and/or materials evaluation and testing, which will involve experts and labs in Johnstown.  Also, CTC will support the Navy’s information dominance and cyber strategy initiatives by providing experts in Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Combat Systems, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance [or C5ISR, as the military calls it],” says Mondello.
 
CTC is a non-profit organization whose mission is to undertake applied scientific research and development activities in the public interest. The company was founded in 1987 as Metalworking Technology Inc., a subsidiary of the University of Pittsburgh Trust. It became CTC in 1992 and became independent of the University of Pittsburgh Trust in 1994. Today CTC employs more than 1,400 at offices throughout the U.S. and Europe.

The other three awardees are General Dynamics Information Technology, Scientific Research Corp., and Science Applications International Corp. 

Source: Lou Mondello, Concurrent Technologies Corporation
Writer: Elise Vider
 

South Side Pittsburgh-based Invivodata is expanding, adding 28,000 square-feet of space to its office in the Commerce Court building in Station Square. Hiring is underway.

The rapidly growing tech company delivers scientific consulting and direct-from-the-patient data collection services to the global pharmaceutical and medical device industry. 

In other regional job and venture capital news:

*Cohera Medical has raised $8.4 million from private investors in a series D round to support clinical trials for its TissueGlu product in the U.S. as well as the development of several new products in the pipeline.

* Net Health Systems in the Strip, a provider of clinical information systems for the rapidly growing field of wound care, is hiring following the news of a significant investment from Spectrum Equity. Net Health declined to offer specifics on the round of funding.

* Aquion Energy’s plans to establish a state-of-the-art manufacturing center in Pittsburgh advanced this month with the help of $15 million in venture funding from Horizon Technology Finance Corp. and Silicon Valley Bank. 

* Lucas System, Inc., a provider of voice-directed logistics solution assisting retailers, wholesale distributors and manufacturers is hiring software support engineers, project managers, customer support managers and software engineers.

Since 2008, its revenues have grown more than 50 percent as it has added new marquee customers, created partnerships with leading supply chain and warehouse management system providers, and established an international presence in Europe and the Pacific Rim.

* Hormann Flexon, LLC, German-based manufacturer of high-performance, industrial doors, is building a 68,000 square-foot facility in Washington County in the Starpoint Business Park near Burgettstown. Construction is expected to begin in late summer 2013. The company will hire about 100 people to start. 

The facility has room to eventually expand to 220,000 square feet. Hormann Group employs more than 6,000 employees worldwide and had sales of more than $1.2 billion last year.

* Audio-visual company Mendtronix Inc. and its subsidiary, Projector Doctor, announced it would open a facility in Latrobe that would employ at least 25 workers. The 15,000-square-foot facility would have a warehouse and repair shop for digital signs, projectors and kiosks serving the New York, Chicago and St. Louis markets. Mendtronix has offices in Atlanta and San Diego.

* Newton Consulting, a provider of information technology and human resources management consulting services, has hired five new employees. The company has grown from 25 to 61 people in the last few years. 

* Smart grid technology company BPL Global has opened an office in India as part of the company's on-going efforts to serve the global smart grid market.

Source: Invivodata, Aquion Energy, Hormann Flexon, Mendtronix, Lucas Systems and BPL Global
Writer: Deb Smit

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Doug Galbraith, founder and CEO of Separation Design Group in Waynesburg, traveled to Washington, hard by the White House, recently to accept a 2012 Tibbetts Award from the Small Business Administration. SDGroup, a research and product development firm, was one of only 18 companies honored from 4,000 nationwide as "beacons of promise and models of excellence in high technology."

Operating out of a 57,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art lab in a former nursing home, SDGroup's team of six engineers and research scientists draws from disciplines including chemistry, physics, computer science and mechanical engineering. Their goal: to develop technologies focused on efficient use of energy and resources with potential for commercialization.

On the day he spoke to Keystone Edge, Galbraith had just filed an application for the company's 7th patent, a hybrid electric aircraft engine. Like hybrid cars, he says, hybrid aircraft are quieter, non-polluting, require less maintenance and are more efficient than those powered by conventional fuels.  The technical challenge is to produce engines capable of extended ranges; the SDGroup's device could potentially carry a small craft cross-country.  To further develop the engine, Galbraith hopes to secure funding from an aircraft maker and from federal programs, such as the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health, which have provided SDGroup with research grants for other projects. 

SDGroup has also developed a personal, desktop oxygen generator that it could ultimately assemble and market direct to consumers and is working on a medical device that uses an oxygen generator for wound care, to accelerate healing. 

Source: Doug Galbraith, Separation Design Group
Writer: Elise Vider

The  elevator pitch is recognized as an essential business tool for our soundbite culture. So it was that 25 teams from five schools (Allegheny College, Grove City College, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania State University and Youngstown State University) gathered recently at the eCenter@LindenPointe, a new Hermitage business incubator, for the 2012 Northwest Pennsylvania College Elevator Pitch Competition. 

Teams of up to six students had three minutes to present their pitches to a panel of experienced investors. 

A Grove City College student with a compelling "elevator pitch" for the Sand Chariot, a beach wheelchair for the physically challenged and elderly, took top honors. Michael Trombly and his father designed the chair for an aunt who has been using it for over six years. 

Eric Engelhardt and Anulekha Venkatram from Allegheny College took second place for their business idea called PureFrac centered on cleaning water used in the Marcellus Shale drilling process. The team recently won first place in the Allegheny College Gator Innovation Challenge.

Third place went to Samantha Weber, Mareah Zuck, Jimmy Van Eerden, and Nathan Albrecht of Grove City College who pitched Profile Passer, an iPhone app for high school athletes and college coaches useful in recruiting.

Yvonne English, eCenter@LindenPointe executive director, says the hope is to go from elevator to board room:  “We’re going to do everything possible to encourage and support these students as they explore business ideas and hopefully start new businesses in our region."

Source: eCenter@LindenPointe
Writer: Elise Vider