A Lockport-based electrical transformer manufacturer wants to go on a $2.44 million expansion to boost its production capacity.
Buffalo Transformer Services, which has been based at 10 Simonds St. for the past five years, is looking to buy the building and 1.2-acre parcel it’s currently housed in. It would expand to make its assembly process more efficient and double its workforce size.
Owner Chad Curtis started the business after working for 18 years at the Tonawanda General Electric plant, which closed in 2017. He and the core of Buffalo Transformer’s workforce gained experience learning how to assemble transformers there, first operating out of a small shop in Tonawanda for three years before moving to Lockport.
“Our business has expanded greatly over those five years,” Curtis said, “requiring us to add more skilled labor and requiring more space and infrastructure to meet the demands of our customer base.”
Buffalo Transformer currently occupies about 30% of the building space at its location, sharing the 30,000 square-foot building with Merritt Machinery. Acquiring the whole building would triple their workspace area and give them room to install two overhead cranes, enabling employees to work on a greater range of transformers.
The company assembles transformers of all sizes for utility companies and industrial plants across the country, along with servicing existing transformers, to meet the growing demands of the electrical grid. They do not make any of the parts themselves, which are brought in from sub-suppliers and modified for the different types of transformers.
Each new one built at the current site can take between a year and a year-and-a-half, with the largest ones weighing up to 200,000 pounds.
Curtis said that while they request parts made in the United States, supply chain issues caused long delays for them. Trying to get products from Pcore Electric Company, based in LeRoy, could take up to 80 weeks, with the company looking to a different supplier in Tennessee.
Buffalo Transformer is asking the Niagara County Industrial Development Agency for $431,210 in various tax incentives for this development, including $348,901 in property tax exemptions, $64,000 in sales tax exemptions, and $18,300 in mortgage recording tax exemptions.
“We are invested in Niagara County and we want to work with all the entities that are here,” Curtis said. “We plan to be here for a very long time.”
Project documents submitted to the IDA show that 12 new full-time jobs would be created with an average annual salary of $83,000, doubling the current workforce size of 11 full-time and two part-time workers. The created jobs would be technicians, engineers, administrators, and managers.
Those documents state that bank financing is expected to pay for the whole project cost. It would cost them $1.1 million to acquire the property, $1 million for improvements, and $300,000 for equipment purchases.
A public hearing for these incentives will take place at 2 p.m. on Oct. 30 at Lockport City Hall.