Company Profile
Atlas Copco Comptec Inc.
Company Overview
Atlas Copco Comptec Inc. is a product company within the business area Compressor Technique of the Atlas Copco Group. The factory is in Voorheesville, NY which is located just outside of Albany, NY, the Capitol city of New York State. The product company develops, manufactures and packages a range of integrally geared centrifugal air and gas compressors for both Oil - free air division (AIF) and the Gas and Process division (GAP). The company employs approximately 262 people.
Company History
ATLAS COPCO’S HISTORY
In 1873, Eduard Franckel, chief engineer of Swedish Rail in Stockholm, Sweden, managed to pursuade some 50 prominent merchants and bankers to put up the capital investment needed to form a company known simply as Atlas.
The aim of the Atlas Company was to produce or purchase for resale all types of equipment used in building and subsequent running of a railroad network.
Wallenberg relationship deepens
In 1891, after many years of continuous loss, the company went into liquidation and the shareholders lost everything they had invested. With the help of Swedish banker A.O.Wallenberg, the company was restructured with the Wallenberg family the largest shareholders. His son, Knut Wallenberg, was placed in charge. (Even today, members of the Wallenberg family serve on the Atlas Copco Board of Directors).
Oscar Lamm was appointed managing director in 1887 and Atlas moved from building railroad bridges (some which remain in use today) and railways toward the production of more advanced products such as steam engines and machine tools. It was the company’s own need for pneumatic tools and machines that fueled the company’s interest and expertise in imported items such as compressors and yoke riveters.
Pneumatic tools, compressors manufactured
The first pneumatic tools were officially introduced on the Atlas production line in 1901. The company launched its compressor business in 1905. The German compressor design was driven by an Atlas steam engine. Besides machine tools, which included rock drills, compressors and steam engines, Atlas was producing steam locomotives – its original product. By 1911, Atlas was out of the railroad carriage business and into a joint partnership for production of diesel engines called AB Atlas diesel.
At the start of WWI in 1915, Atlas delivered its final steam locomotive with over 50% of the company revenues and an even larger part of its profits coming from the sale of pneumatic tools and compressors.
Portable compressors designed
Atlas was hard hit by the depressions in the 1920s and 1930s in Europe and the United States. It concentrated on export sales of diesel engines while compressed air tools development quietly continued within Sweden. Portable compressors were also being designed.
During these days, the customer “ombudsman” theory and research and development focus emerged. These are the Atlas hallmarks even today.
The Atlas mining (of rock for tunnels or coal for heat) business expanded following WWI, and was coined “The Swedish Method.” French, American or German equipment and technology could not compete and “The Swedish Method” remains the mining standard to date.
Compressor sales are high
With demands in compressors, tools and mining equipment so high, Atlas closed its unprofitable diesel engine business in 1948 and expanded compressed air machines and equipment.
In 1956, the company’s name was changed to Atlas Copco (Compagnie Pneumatique Commerciale).
Since then, Atlas Copco has continued to expand its core business, often through acquisition and retention of the previous company’s logo and brand name.
Voorheesville becomes ACC’s home
In 1980, the Turbonetics Inc. business, part of Mechanical Technology Inc. of Latham, New York, was purchased and moved to Voorheesville, New York. This was the first centrifugal compressor business in the company. The official name of the business is Atlas Copco Comptec (Compressor technology) and reports to the Compressor Technique business in Antwerp, Belgium.
Our state-of-the-art facility here (and a sister plant in Cologne, Germany) manufactures and engineers integrally geared centrifugal compressors used in various applications. These include air separation, fuel gas boosting, wastewater aeration, and various petrochemical processes.
Atlas Copco locations in USA
Other Atlas Copco companies within the U.S.A. include: Atlas Copco Compressors Inc. in Westfield, MA and Rock Hill, SC (portable air compressors), Chicago Pneumatic Tool in Rock Hill, SC (industrial and automotive tools), and Atlas Copco Tools and Assembly Systems (Industrial tools and customized assembly systems) in Auburn Hills, MI, and Atlas Copco Construction Mining Technique USA Inc. in Commerce City, CO.
For more information on the Atlas Copco Group visit our website at www.atlascopco.com