Reply to "Crane Cams"

I'll share what I've learned so far.

Crane Cams was founded by Harvey Crane, Jr. in 1953 in Hallendale, Florida and operated from a corner of his father’s machine shop. As his business grew Harvey Crane Jr. eventually moved his company into its own facilities in Hallendale. For many years Crane had purchased its steel cam cores from Universal Camshaft Company, of Muskegon, Michigan. When that company became available in 1975 Crane acquired it, thereby providing itself with a stable, long-term source for steel cam cores. That operation was moved in 1981 to a newly constructed manufacturing center in Daytona Beach Florida. In 1985 Crane Cams left Hallandale Florida and joined Universal Camshaft in Daytona Beach.

For 26 years Crane Cams was family owned, and became employee owned in 1979. Harvey Crane Jr. was “let go” in 1989, and founded his own camshaft consulting company the following year.

Crane Cams acquired Camshaft Machine Company and its plants in Michigan and Indiana in 1994. To better reflect its new market mix, the company's name was changed to Crane Technologies Group. Five years later the company reversed its decision and sold Camshaft Machine to Federal-Mogul Corp. Crane decided to return to its core cam and valve train business and its roots in the performance market.

Crane Cams was acquired by Mikronite Technologies Group, Inc. of Eatontown, New Jersey in 2006. Mikronite is an industrial technology firm that develops, patents, acquires, and licenses proprietary technologies primarily for materials polishing, surface strengthening, reactivity, uniformity and related processes. They have contracts in the aerospace, automotive, commercial and medical fields. Crane Cams and Mikronite had established a business association in 2005, utilizing Mikronite’s proprietary surface finishing process on a number of valve train components. Mikronite is led by CEO Jeffrey Coats, 51, who is also CEO and a board member of Autobytel. Crane now operates as a division of Mikronite.

Since the acquisition Mikronite Technologies has invested $18 million in new equipment for Crane Cams, seeking to maintain Crane Cams position as a technology leader in the performance camshaft manufacturing industry. Mikronite Technologies also relocated its operations from New Jersey and joined Crane Cams in Daytona Beach after receiving promises of tax rebates from the State of Florida and Volusia County as incentive for the move. The first sign of trouble occured in 2007, when Mikronite sold Crane Cams' Daytona Beach property to STAG Capital Partners in Boston, and then signed a 10-year lease with STAG. The following year (2008) Mikronite terminated its contract with the State of Florida due to nonperformance.

It has been reported Volusia County Florida's economic development department had been working with Crane Cams to help keep them open and Crane’s employees in their jobs. Rick Michael, Volusia County economic development director said “We were trying to help them through this transition, they were considering a transfer of ownership, we were not expecting any closure.”

Crane had employed 220 (some reports said 280) people three years ago but had gone through a series of small layoffs recently. The week prior to the closure workers had been told more layoffs were eminent, but there had been no mention of a plant closure.

Crane Cams shut down Feb. 24 citing restructuring as the reason. Most of the company’s workers were laid off; about 25 remained to work on military contracts. A press announcement by Crane Cams vice president Steve Leva said the closure was in response to the global economic problems, but they expected to reopen in a week to 30 days (sometime in March).

Doesn’t it sound like a dispute between Mikronite and the County of Volusia may be at the core of Crane’s closure rather than financial problems?