“The need was recognized three years ago and we wanted to stay local and find a space large enough that would accommodate our long-term growth plan,” Bowman told the Dayton Daily News.
Tark employs more than 70. It was up to 40 employees in Montgomery County before the relocation and projecting a 22% sales increase since last year, Bowman said. That growth, plus the new facility, has led to eight more positions created in Miami Twp. and six more at its Boston-area facility.
“Our customers are experiencing significant growth levels due to global market demands, along with rebuilding pipelines from COVID constraints,” Bowman said. ‘This level of demand is expected to sustain, and we are courting additional customers for more opportunities.”
The relocation effort saw the company stop operations at its former location at noon on a Friday and be fully operational at the new one the following Monday.
“We still had various areas to finish but in all, we maintained business as usual and continued to supply our customers with no interruption from the move,” Bowman said.
The move was necessary because Tark has “an aggressive growth plan for the next 10 years and ideally, beyond,” she said.
“The facility we were housed in before did not allow for volume increases, new product development, and limited our ability to serve our customers. This signifies an investment in our customers, our team and our future.”
Tark got its start in 1985, when co-founders Ferdie Lustwerk and Joe McCarthy met at MIT early in their careers and discovered a need for heat transfer products to support the Computed Tomography and X-Ray markets. They developed cooling pumps that withstood the temperature and G-forces required to operate the equipment. The company has seen steady growth and is creating additional opportunities with new product lines for new markets in 2022.
Tark is owned by Jim McCarthy, son of founder Joe McCarthy, who still reports to work at 92.
“We have seen increases in our existing legacy product lines — our cooling pumps that support the CT and X-Ray industries,” Bowman said. “In addition, we are launching a recirculation pump that will be leveraged in data centers to recirculate the refrigerant to keep the servers cool.”
Bowman said the company’s biggest success during the pandemic was being able to keep everyone employed.
“It was challenging and our employees were very flexible and understanding,” she said. “We did our best to keep them working to meet our customer needs, but with the fluctuations in supply chains, we had ebbs and flows. The state funding was also instrumental in maintaining our employee base and ensuring that when we all returned to normal, we had retained the right people in the right seats.”