Elite Metal Finishing LLC in Oxnard, California, has purchased A.M. Metal Finishing in Orlando, Florida, to serve their aerospace clients on the Eastern seaboard.
Joel Clemons“We really want to be more involved in the space market and exploration,” says Joel Clemons, Director of Quality and a Managing Member of EMF. “If It’s anything to do with rockets and satellites, and we want to support our customers and the industry by following it out here to Florida.”
A.M. Metal Finishing was formerly owned by Rick and Sloane Hunter and specialized in color, hardcoat, bulk, rack, and architectural anodizing, as well as chromate conversion, electropolishing, passivation, powder coating, black oxide, electroless nickel, and dry film lubricant.
Finding a Shop that Aligned with California Operations
The Hunters had the facility on the market for several years and were close to making a deal to sell the company several times over the past few years. In fact, Clemons says they approached them last year to offer to buy the facility, but they already had a buyer.
“Apparently, that fell through, and we started talking again with them,” Clemons says. “We had been looking at several shops that aligned with the same processes that we had in California, and this one fit it fairly closely.”
Elite Metal Finishing has more than 100,000 square feet of space in California and more than 160 workers, offering chemical processing and plating, painting, non-destructive testing, and parts marking to a wide base of commercial, military, and aerospace companies.
They are often confused by a company with the same name in Oceanside, California, but Clemons says adding a Florida operation will help them establish themselves even more in the finishing industry.
Getting Florida Facility Up to Needed Specification
Clemons says they have been working on getting the Florida facility up to the needed specification — including new cranes — to run operations similar to their California plant.Elite Metal Finishing is a family-owned operation, with Clemons now running the company with his cousin, Greg Hansen, who is in charge of production for the facility.
Clemons says they have been working on getting the Florida facility up to the needed specification to run operations similar to their California plant.
“We needed a lot of power in the Florida plant to accommodate all of the additional equipment being installed,” Clemons says. “Our original plan if we couldn’t buy a facility was to build a new one from scratch, but we believe this will work for us for the time being.”
The former A.M. Metal Finishing facility has 15 employees, which Elite Metal Finishing is retaining — “There are truly some talented people and great employees here,” Clemons says — but they have been working to “scrape” the building to get it ready for additional functionality.
“This is a tired building with tired equipment, so we have been working on adding new hoists and cranes, as well as new tanks and rectifiers,” Clemons says. “We are still in operation because we want to keep the relationships with our current customers here going, but this is going to take a lot of work to get it ready.”
Possible Further Expansion in Florida
Even then, Clemons says they might still be looking at a different location in Florida to get more space and to make the operations run more smoothly.
“When you start finishing rocket parts, then you are getting into some bigger stuff that needs to be hauled around,” he says. “From the standpoint of our operator's health and safety, I think it is better off running bridge cranes because you can get better tank loading, and it is just more efficient all around.”
A.M. Metal Finishing had done work for Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, NASA, and even the Walt Disney World Co. in the past, and Clemons says the space and rocket industry is expanding even more in Florida.
“One of the biggest satellite companies in the world is building a new facility in Merritt Island, and you are seeing more projects moving to Cape Canaveral, too,” he says. “California is often a difficult place to do business, and they certainly have an eye at the metal finishing market there, so we think it is a great move for us in Florida.”
