One last trip down memory lane!  A quick journey through time about the development of a coating company.

SilcoTek Through the Years

SilcoTek has come a long way since our inception as a small start up group within our parent company.  Let's take a quick journey to understand how we've become a better company.

The Early Years

In 1985 Paul Silvis started Restek® Corporation, a chromatography company.  The startup was located in one room of a former elementary school-turned-business-incubator.  As the business grew, Paul realized he needed an inert surface for analytical columns and stainless steel applications.  His first efforts in applying a primitive chemical vapor deposition to stainless gave birth to an idea that grew into what is today SilcoTek®.

When I joined Restek to work in the Performance Coatings Group in 1998; the team consisted of Gary Barone (who is still with the company and is our Director of Engineering and Business Development) and 2 coating technicians.  We had to depend our our parent to provide most support functions.  Our research and development support came from the Restek Research and Development Team.  Dr. David Smith (now our R&D director) saw great potential in the group and was providing R&D support to us and developing new coatings for the division.  Our primary product at the time was called Silcosteel®, David had just developed and patented our SilcoNert® 2000 coating (then called Sulfinert®).

The facility, if you can call it that, consisted of a handful of process ovens and a few lab benches tucked in the back of a chromatography production lab.  We had little to no process capability and had more ideas and theory to guide us than real data or process controls.  In some cases it took weeks and weeks to process parts through the rudimentary production line.  The largest part we could coat (other than tubing and air canisters) measured about the size of your fist.  We hadn't developed much in the way of oven automation or surface preparation methods at that time, yet our customers loved the product and became fans of the small team.  That's because with our coatings in their analytical flow paths, the analysts could detect contaminants (mainly sulfur at the time) at lower levels than they could ever before.

Building a Business

As the years passed we added great people to our team and began to develop more robust and reliable processes.  By the mid 1990's our group had grown to occupy an old warehouse portion of the Restek facility.  Part of our team, anyone flying a desk, were located in a trailer in the parking lot near the production floor.  It was a cold place to be in the winter and hot in the summer but the team worked to grow the business.  We had better automation and a more defined coating process and most importantly our customers continued to love our product. 

We became a separate division within Restek in 2002, then officially called Restek Performance Coatings or RPC.  We offered 5 coatings back then.  Some were successful, others not but our Production, research capability, and customer facing Marketing/sales teams grew.  We started to talk about spinning off the group into a separate business.  After another relocation that finally consolidated the group onto one dedicated facility within Restek, we were ready to become a separate company. 

The SilcoTek Team at the start of our new venture.

On Our Own

In 2009 we spun off from Restek® and became SilcoTek®.  The group consisted of about 15 people then.  That's when the real growth began.  Our team became better as we brought on more talent and skills in all areas of the business.  Including Production, Engineering Customer Service, R&D, Marketing, Sales, Quality Systems, and Intellectual Property.  We developed new coatings and new ways of applying the coatings.  Our quality became the best in the business and we expanded our markets. 

Learn more about our coating applications and benefits.

Today our company has grown from a handful of people in a few hundred square feet of facility to over 60 dedicated individuals working in a state-of-the-art 70,000 square foot facility.  Our operation is larger and more sophisticated by far, but our team is still made up of people who are dedicated to going to work every day to make your products better and to creating a positive customer experience. 

We're known around the world and have expanded our business to include not only analytical markets but semiconductor, oil and gas exploration, life sciences, renewable energy and a host of other markets.  That market growth and reach is reflected in our website popularity which has just crossed the all time one million session mark.  

The future is bright for SilcoTek® as we continue on the path to making customer products better.  Our team will grow and continue to delight our customers with innovative products.  That growth, however will be without one person.  This will be my last blog post as a SilcoTek employee.  It's fitting that my last post is a review of our progress and growth as a company.  I'm retiring from the business but have great memories of having a hand in building a great company and being a part of a fabulous organization.  Others will and have come along to make more significant contributions to the business than I.  But I'm none the less happy to have known our team and helped where I can to contribute to the betterment of the organization and our customers.

Will the blog continue?  Fear not!  Our blog will continue with even better content and discussions.  We're expanding the pool of contributors to make our content more engaging!  So you'll be hearing from a more diverse and hopefully more interesting people than me!

As always we'll be here for our customers.