Seymour Manufacturer Unveils Renovated Facility

SEYMOUR — Emery Winslow Scale Company’s equipment is used to weigh everything from Cheerios for General Mills to polar bears for SeaWorld. 

The 151-year-old company recently opened its renovated manufacturing and assembly plant in the industrial park at 73 Cogwheel Road in Seymour.

A ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by the company’s owners, executives and local dignitaries last week celebrated the demolition and rebuild of the new space.

“Manufacturing is still alive and well here in our state,” said Bill Purcell, president and CEO of the Greater Valley Chamber of Commerce. ​“We have 4,500 manufacturing companies across the state, employing 160,000 people. They contribute mightily to the $15-plus-billion of our state’s exports around the world.”

Emery Winslow Scale Company is in an industrial park with businesses such as Thule Inc. and Microboard Processing Inc., which was just inducted into the American Manufacturing Hall of Fame.

Emery Winslow Scale Company’s owners, brothers and triplets Will, Jay and Dave Young, attended the ribbon cutting. All three are vice presidents. Among the other prominent executives there were CEO Walter Loeffler, past president Bill Fischer, who headed the company for 40 years, and Vice President Rudi Baisch.

Pat Munger Construction built the new 22,000-square-foot facility. Its president, David A. DeMaio, and Project Manager Michael Cormier Jr. attended Wednesday’s ceremony. DeMaio said construction began in the spring and the building was turned over to Emery Winslow Scale Company by the end of July.

First Selectman Kurt Miller said $2 million voters recently approved to repair roads will be used for the industrial park in the spring. Since being put in 30 years ago, Miller said the roads at the park were never paved.

“We’ve been able to keep our taxes stable the last four years and we can do that with companies reinvesting in Seymour,” Miller said.

The First Selectman praised his team at Town Hall for working to improve the business environment in Seymour. ​“We try to make this community as business friendly as we can and as easy as we can,” he said.

State Rep. Nicole Klarides-Ditria, R‑105th, congratulated Emery Winslow Scale Company for being an ​“amazing family company.” Alluding to her family’s supermarket business, Klarides-Ditria said she knows the daily struggles of running a business in Connecticut, adding it is much harder.

“Kurt Miller and I will do everything in our power to keep you in Seymour and keep you in Connecticut,” she said.

Kelly said Emery Winslow has 35 employees at the facility.

A company history

Emery Winslow Vice President Rudi Baisch gave a brief history of the company, whose legal name is still A H Emery Company.

It was founded by Albert Hamilton Emery, a surveyor for the railroad before going to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and finishing the four-year civil engineering program in just two-and-a-half years.

In 1861, he was hired by the Army as an engineer, where he worked on guns and projectiles for several years. That was during the Civil War and Baisch said it is very possible that Emery had met President Abraham Lincoln, who often walked from the White House to the War Department.

Remington Arms later paid Emery to design a new scale and, as a result of that success, the Army Ordnance Department asked him to design a new generation 400-ton testing machine.

“To do this, he first designed a 20-ton scale, which would allow him to calibrate the testing machine,” Baisch said. ​“His machines won two gold medals for ​‘Best Scientific Apparatus’ and ​‘Exhibit most conducive to human welfare.’”

Emery founded A H Emery Company in 1868 and the company bought the Winslow Scale company, which made truck and track scales in Terre Haute, Ind., in 1974, then acquired Pennsylvania Scale, a manufacturer of electronic scales, in 2003.