It’s hard to sum up Pease & Curren Inc.’s business in a single word.
Much of the 40,000-square-foot building in Warwick suggests manufacturing: unfinished, concrete floors that vibrate as dozens of massive incinerators melt down jewelry, scrap metal and dental crowns into their original, pure metal forms. A giant ball mill – think of it like a kitchen blender on steroids – grinds up to 25,000 ounces of incinerated metals at a time, ensuring every single sample of ash from the batch is the same as the rest.
Then there’s the chemistry lab: surfaces covered with beakers and test tubes and an X-ray fluorescence device – one of two ways the company analyzes each sample for the exact breakdown of metals.
There’s also quite a bit of number-crunching: how much the company can pay the jewelers, manufacturers, dental offices and other customers for their gold, silver and scrap metal, and in turn, what the company expects to make selling the metal on the commodity market.
“We live on a small margin,” said Francis “Frank” H. Curren IV, the company vice president. “As a commodity, the value goes up and down, so we need to hedge the risk.”
Curren is not only the fourth of his name but the fourth generation to work in the family business. An Aquidneck Island native, he started working for Pease & Curren in high school, mastering the intricacies of the company started by his great-grandfather in 1916.
Inside a small conference room, a series of picture frames adorning the walls pay tribute to those early days: a photo of the original Allens Avenue building, a 1929 story published in The Evening Bulletin and a faded, handwritten ledger recording the first weights and returns of processed metals.
That long history makes the company stand out in an industry dependent upon trust and reputation, Curren said.
“We’re asking people to ship their most valuable commodities, sometimes across the country, and not get paid upfront,” Curren said, though the company guarantees payment within five business days.
Despite his family ties to the business, Curren never felt pressured to follow in anybody’s footsteps. Instead, he went to law school, and worked for half a dozen years at Greater Boston Legal Services, helping low-income clients at risk of foreclosure. In 2018, he decided to “give it a shot” at Pease & Curren.
While managing day-to-day operations of a metal refinement business might seem an abrupt change from a career in legal services, Curren sees similarities.
He understands the finances from litigating complicated mortgage cases, for example.
Rather than making his case in the courtroom, he’s helping the sales team persuade clients to use their services. There are no contracts – a common industry practice – so the stakes are even higher. That pitch has also been made more difficult by Zoom-only meetings for most of the pandemic, though Curren hopes to resume travel for in-person interactions soon.
“It’s a lot easier to ship your gold if you’ve seen someone in a blazer face to face,” he said. “People still want to meet and have that relationship.”
OWNER: Francis H. Curren III
LOCATION: 75 Pennsylvania Ave., Warwick
EMPLOYEES: 17
TYPE OF BUSINESS: Metal refinement
YEAR FOUNDED: 1916
ANNUAL SALES: WND
Nancy Lavin is a PBN staff writer. Contact her at Lavin@PBN.com.