Storage Case Maker Checks Into Medical Market

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Pelican Products Inc., a Torrance company that makes heavy-duty flashlights as well as bomb-proof storage cases for everything from laptops and iPods to guns and oil drilling equipment, is branching out into the medical market.

In August, the company plans to release a line of cold-storage containers designed to transport vaccines and other pharmaceuticals.

Pelican Chief Executive Lyndon Faulkner said several drug makers and logistics companies approached Pelican about making a rugged, controlled-environment case to replace standard coolers or foam containers typically used to transport temperature-sensitive drugs.

“You’ve got millions of dollars worth of products being moved around in cardboard boxes and polystyrene iceboxes,” Faulkner said. “The technology they use means products can be frozen or get too cold because they use dry ice.”

That’s especially problematic for some vaccines, which must be kept cold without freezing.

The product line, Pelican BioPharma, integrates the company’s existing hard-shell, waterproof plastic containers with interior panels similar to the reusable freezer packs used in lunch boxes, though much longer lasting.

The removable panels use insulation and a proprietary chemical to maintain a temperature of between 36 and 46 degrees – the ideal range for many vaccines – for nearly six days.

The cases, which for now will be manufactured at Pelican’s plant in South Deerfield, Mass., come in three sizes, the largest about as big as a suitcase. Pelican has not announced prices for the cases, but Faulkner said the company plans to sell them as well as work with logistics companies to offer them for rent.

Pelican’s total sales are expected to reach $400 million this year – about 80 percent of that from military, public safety agencies and industrial customers – and the new BioPharma line could add tens of millions to that, Faulkner said.

“This could be quite a large business,” he said. “It’s a big extension of what we do.”

Bay Crossing

Santa Fe Springs steel fabricator Westmont Industries builds moving walkways for malls and airports, as well as cranes used by companies that build jet engines.

But it also takes custom orders – for instance, it built a 50-foot turntable that lies beneath the Hollywood Bowl’s stage – and later this year will deliver five massive maintenance platforms that will be installed along a new section of the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge.

The 119-foot-long platforms, called travelers, are scaffolds propelled along rails by pneumatic engines. They will carry engineers, inspectors and maintenance workers along the underside of a half-mile segment of the bridge’s new eastern span. Four platforms, each more than 100 feet long, will be used beneath regular traffic lanes. A fifth smaller traveler will be used under a bicycle lane.

The bridge segment has an advertised life span of 150 years, and Frank Judge, Westmont’s chief operating officer, said the travelers will be key to meeting that goal.

“To get to 150 years, they’re going to have to do constant maintenance and inspection,” he said.

Westmont, a company with about 150 employees and $50 million in annual sales, started building the travelers about a year ago and recently finished testing the platforms for safety. Judge said the travelers will be delivered to the Bay Area this fall.

The company’s $12 million contract is tiny part of the overall bridge replacement project, which has an estimated price tag of $6.3 billion.

Northward Bound

Santa Clarita’s Morton Manufacturing, a private company that makes bolts and fasteners used in aircraft engines, is relocating its plant and more than 200 workers to Lancaster.

Morton will break ground on an 80,000-square-foot building in the city’s Lancaster Business Park within a year. Chief Executive Yolanda Morton said Morton’s 45,000-square-foot plant in Santa Clarita is at capacity thanks to a healthy market for new commercial passenger jets. The company started looking for a larger location last year as it began to see growing orders from customers such as General Electric Co. in Fairfield, Conn.

“We’ve run out of space,” Morton said. “We’ve grown so much just in the last six months. There’s a lot of new airplanes being purchased.”

Morton said she looked for a larger facility in Santa Clarita but couldn’t find anything. She also said nearly half of her employees already live in or around Lancaster.

Lancaster Mayor R. Rex Parris touted Morton’s move as a coup for the city, which has been trying for several years to lure more manufacturers.

“Bringing a manufacturing company to a city is a really competitive process now,” Parris said. “My instruction to staff is, ‘You had better not be an obstacle.’”

Staff reporter James Rufus Koren can be reached at [email protected] or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 225.

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