Monday, September 4, 2006

Nano maker of 'Super Hard Steel' moves to R.I.

By Patricia Resende

NanoSteel Co. said goodbye to its Maitland, Fla.-based headquarters recently and moved up the coast to make Providence, R.I., its new home.

Executives say they wanted to be closer to their Rhode Island-based vendor, to gain access to a larger talent pool, and to have a better quality of life.

With $12 million in funding in hand, and an exclusive license from the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Lab, engineers at NanoSteel have been busy developing a new class of nano-structured steel called, well, "Super Hard Steel."

"In a nutshell, we are reinventing steel and we are bringing steel where it could never be used before," said David Paratore, president and chief executive officer at NanoSteel.

The nanotechnology was being developed at the Idaho lab for close to 15 years before it licensed the technology and together with Maitland-based holding company MILCOM Technologies Inc., which provided the initial $3 million in funding, spun out a company.

Dan Branagan, one of the scientists working on the technology at the national lab, followed his work out of the lab and is now chief technology officer at NanoSteel.

"These guys came up with great technology and needed to commercialize it to make it cost effective," Paratore said. "We have added to the technology and added our new patents."

NanoSteel's technology is used to increase the performance of metal and is currently being used in mining and drilling equipment, boilers and concrete trucks and automobiles.

Since 2003, the company has been offering thin coatings applied by thermal spray. Thick coatings applied by a weld overlay will be offered by next month, say executives.

The company is targeting mainstream applications, and executives say the technology is applicable anyplace steel or metallic coatings are used.

"We went after the places with the highest value," Paratore said.

And customers do not have to purchase new equipment in order to use the nano-sized steel because the alloys are designed to be used with existing equipment. "People use the same welding torch or thermal spray gun that they did 15 years ago," the CEO said.

The next step for NanoSteel is to move toward sheet steel, which the company plans to do within the next six months.

Already the company has negotiated contracts with Praxair TAFA, a Concord, N.H.-based division of Fortune 500 company Praxair Inc., and Grant Prideco, Houston-based provider of drilling products.

The company expects to sell 200,000 pounds of its product this year.

Choosing New England -- and more specifically Rhode Island -- was not the cheapest choice, according to executives, but it had the best talent pool to choose from.

Nanosteel has already hired an operations manager from the area and plans to hire an additional six employees in sales and other positions.

Paratore, a native of Franklin, Mass., and a Rhode Island resident for the past seven years, said there is an outstanding community in New England, and Rhode Island offers a nice quality of life.

But were there any incentives for the nanotech company to make the move? Paratore says no.

An effort to provide such incentives is under way through the state's Science and Technology Advisory Council (STAC), a group formed to make recommendations to the Governor and General Assembly, to push research in nanotechnology and incentives for entrepreneurs.

"Nanotechnology is a great addition to the innovation economy we are building here," said Saul Kaplan, executive director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corp. and STAC member. "I fully expect we will broaden the focus to now include material sciences, nanotechnology, and marine technology."

Paratore is hopeful that a region driven by biotechnology and life sciences will see and embrace the potential of nanotechnology to industry. Rhode Island has only half dozen or so nanotechnology-based businesses, he said.

"We are not just developing nanotechnology, we are selling it. We are selling real products to real customers today," Paratore said.

Patricia Resende is a freelance writer in Bristol, R.I.