Charged Sales

“It was a pretty simple goal, really,” said Joel Gibson, vice president of operations for NorthStar Battery Co. “It was to provide very good batteries to people and to take care of them. And we thought the business would come.”

Gibson had helped build two other battery factories for other companies before becoming one of six founding investors in NorthStar. There are now nine owners, with Lester Miller holding majority interest.

The plant makes lead-acid batteries for telecommunications towers and uninterruptible power supplies.

Due to the telecom crash of 2001–2002 that pulled Worldcom, 360networks and Global Crossing into bankruptcy, NorthStar’s growth was slow during the first few years, Gibson said. Money had to be made by taking customers away from competing battery companies. Pulling in large customers such as Ericsson and Verizon took longer than expected.

“It took about 18 months to two years, of testing and beating our batteries up in their facilities, before they decided that we were actually a superior product (compared to what) they were currently carrying,” Gibson said. “And since they did that, we’ve seen them start to switch over to our product.”

The revenues prove it. Plant sales have doubled in each of the last four years, reaching $75 million in 2005, Gibson said.

A recent factory expansion has given the Partnership Industrial Center site a total of 200,000 square feet. One or more new facilities will be necessary within two years, he said.

“The big challenge for us really has been to keep up with the growth,” Gibson said.

Robotic assembly

Plant manager Tim Collins said that despite the fact that much of the production line is operated by robotics, the factory has been hiring about 10 to 20 new employees each month. The plant, which runs 24 hours per day seven days per week, makes about 3,000 batteries a day and has a staff of about 300 people, including eight engineers.

“They take a lot of pride in their work,” Collins said. “We have tremendous productivity.”

Collins, who has been with the company for six months, said he was very impressed that the entire robotic-driven assembly line and all of the NorthStar batteries were designed and built by the employees at the plant.

“We’ve really found that, for us, there’s a competitive edge and there’s certainly a cost edge for doing it in-house,” said Gibson, who worked for Hawker Battery Co.’s Springfield plant before it closed. “The key was (finding) people talented enough to pull that off. ... Once we found the talent, obviously, we can build this equipment for probably half the cost, in-house.

“And it’s also being built by people who truly understand the battery business. They understand the processing, which gives them an edge on giving us exactly what we want.”

One thing that was important to Gibson in designing the factory was its impact on the environment. The plant releases less than 10 percent of the allowable pollutant levels for air and water waste, he said.

“The goal for us was, a hundred years from now, you could go out (side) any wall of this building and take a core sample, and it would be totally clean,” Gibson said. “We’re absolutely certain that’s the case, and we’ve worked places where that wasn’t the case.”

Because of the automated assembly line and a continuous quality check program, Gibson said NorthStar has created products that perform much more consistently than its competitors, which has lead to higher profits.

“I think our last return rate number was 0.15 percent,” Gibson said, “verses 3 percent, which would be kind of the norm in the industry.”

Foreign surge

Jerry Hoffman, president and another founding investor, said the majority of sales come from more than 100 foreign countries, including Russia, China and Brazil. Hoffman personally visited 20 countries last year.

NorthStar has two service and distribution centers in Sweden and China.

“We’re setting up to play and serve the global markets from headquarters here in Springfield,” he said.

Hoffman said the telecom industry should continue to grow as wireless voice and data devices such as cell phones and personal digital assistants become more popular around the world. The company also is participating in research for other future technologies, such as hybrid cars and military applications.

“We continue to modify the products, just based on the latest technology that comes out,” Hoffman said. “But, having said that, the core energy storage technology has been the same for about a hundred years. Where we think we’ve made a difference, we’ve just gotten much more progressive at how you manufacture. So we’ve basically taken a 150-year-old product and applied modern manufacturing techniques to it – and picked up the efficiencies that resulted.”

NorthStar Battery Co.

Founded: 2000

Owner: NorthStar Battery Co. LLC

Address: 4000 Continental Way, Springfield, MO 65803

Phone: (417) 575-8200

Fax: (417) 575-8250

Web site: www.northstarbattery.com

Products: Lead-acidbatteries

2005 Revenues: $75M

Employees: 300