East Providence’s Nordson EFD strong at home, abroad

INJECTING LIFE: East Providence-based Nordson Engineered Fluid Dispensing has sales and service in more than 30 countries. Above, Nordson employee  Petronila  Saquic works in the company’s facility. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS
INJECTING LIFE: East Providence-based Nordson Engineered Fluid Dispensing has sales and service in more than 30 countries. Above, Nordson employee Petronila Saquic works in the company’s facility. / PBN PHOTO/TRACY JENKINS

Even though a large portion of American companies have for many years been outsourcing operations to Central America, Asia and other countries around the globe, Nordson Engineered Fluid Dispensing has continued to hold onto its customers.
The East Providence-based company has sales and service in more than 30 countries worldwide through a network of local offices and authorized distributors.
“It started with the maquiladoras – U.S.-based companies that for financial reasons or tax incentives or low cost of labor were going not too far over the U.S. border,” said Nordson EFD Director of Engineering and Operations Dave Zgonc. “That’s been going on since NAFTA. They have equipment, and they take us with them.”
The North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA, went into effect in 1994, and whichever way global trade moves, Nordson’s precision dispensing systems that apply accurate, consistent amounts of adhesives, sealants, lubricants and other assembly fluids have continued to be increasingly used in countries around the world. The precision dispensing solutions are primarily for industrial markets.
“It could be for fluid like glue to assemble a pacemaker or to apply lubrication for watches,” said Zgonc. “The machines we make are not specific to an industry, they are specific to dispensing.”
“Particularly in Rhode Island, and in all of New England, our company is built on servicing people who are manufacturing, “said Zgonc. “Over the last decade or two, as a lot of manufacturing was outsourced to Asia, we continued to supply those manufacturers.
“Asia is definitely going up, with China being the largest part of our market. Asia is about 35 percent of our sales,” said Zgonc. “China is the manufacturing center of the world, and we’ve seen our growth rate in that sector as high as 20 or 30 percent annually.”
In addition to its substantial segment of customers in Southeast Asia, Japan and India, Nordson sends about 27 percent of its products to Europe, said Zgonc. The company exports to the market generally called the Americas, which includes countries from Canada to South America.
Rhode Island is one of 29 states recognized by the U.S. Department of Commerce’s International Trade Administration as having achieved record export growth in 2012, according to a Jan. 12 press release from the office of Gov. Lincoln D. Chafee. Rhode Island recorded 4.1 percent growth in exports in 2012 from the previous year, according to the governor’s office. Exports from the Ocean State totaled $2.4 billion in 2012.
In 2012, the state’s largest export growth – up 10-14 percent – was in chemicals, machinery, computer electronics and textiles, according to the governor’s office.
“Export development is critical for job creation in Rhode Island,” Raymond W. Fogarty, director of Bryant University’s John H. Chafee Center for International Business, said in the release from the governor’s office. “Every $200,000 in exports creates one new job.”
The growth of 2012 has continued into 2013, according to Chafee’s office, which quoted January figures showing 26.75 percent increase in exports during the month.
Nationally, U.S exports of goods and services reached a record-setting $2.2. trillion in 2012, according to a Feb. 26 press release from the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Even with some U.S. companies bringing work back from China and other locations, Nordson’s precision dispensing products are so solidly tied to their customers’ manufacturing that business hasn’t skipped a beat, said Zgonc.
And the companies that didn’t outsource are holding steady, too.
“We’ve been able to maintain our success with the businesses that stayed in the U.S. because they have to be focused on efficiency and automation,” Zgonc said.
Nordson EFD’s national and international strength adds up to 200 jobs at its worldwide headquarters in East Providence, 400 overall in its Engineered Fluid Dispensing division, including a manufacturing facility in New Jersey, and 4,000 employees worldwide.
Rhode Island manufacturers are constantly concerned about the skills gap – a shortage of workers who do not have the necessary skills to fill jobs despite open positions.
“The jobs that have been challenging to fill are the ones for people to operate injection-molding machines,” said Zgonc. “It takes a long time to hire those people. And every time we hire, we look at it as an opportunity to take it to the next level. We want the very best of the best.” •

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