SEQUIM — Christopher Greimes is a man with a 10-year plan to produce titanium marine parts in, of all places, Sequim.
His company, Allied Titanium, is based in Delaware, with the bulk of its manufacturing in China.
Now some production and its shipping facilities are in Sequim out of a warehouse off East Washington Street, with plans to expand.
“The big point is we are making products, such as washers and threaded rods, for less than in China,” Greimes said, “in the thousands.”
He noted that the company offers some 100,000 marine parts, each of which can be seen on its website at www.alliedtitanium.com in rotating 3-D animation.
“We’re also making all kinds of marine parts they simply can’t make in China.
“The main thing over the past year is we got the factory up and running, using 11 machines now running 40 hours a week.”
Greimes said he came to the conclusion that his company needed to start building in America to deliver parts as quickly as American citizens wanted.
In 2012, three criteria brought the business to Sequim, Greimes said.
“Sequim and Port Angeles have better UPS and FedEx services than Seattle; the people who live here are hardworking with a good work ethic; and the city of Sequim always balances its budget, which means it’s stable and won’t act erratically.”
In 2015, Greimes invested heavily in computerized manual machines and production began. Now, all of the company’s washers and threaded rods are manufactured in the fabrication shop.
“The next step is to identify methodologies for making other parts here such as small screws,” Greimes said.
“We now have a room of manual machines because we can experiment with them and then build programs for automated machines to make more parts.”
Having been in the marine products business himself, Greimes was well aware of the built-in obsolescence of stainless steel.
Two fatalities involving mast fastener failures (by other companies’ products) led him to titanium.
“The Coast Guard investigation report said the stainless steel parts failed due to corrosion — they looked pretty on the outside but were rotted inside,” Greimes said.
“The dominant metal in the pleasure marine industry is stainless steel, but it corrodes from the inside out. That’s why it’s so dangerous.”
So in 2007, Greimes founded Allied Titanium and began manufacturing in China, where the metal was plentiful and inexpensive.
Greimes said stainless steel is twice as heavy as titanium and the latter is three times as strong as the former.
“Titanium is stronger, lighter and corrosion-free in the natural environment,” Greimes said.
“I discovered it was plentiful worldwide but not in America. When we started sending our fasteners to the marketplace from China, I discovered they were two to five times below cost of titanium fasteners made in the U.S., so that became our core business.
“By 2012, most of our customers wanted their parts in two weeks, which we couldn’t do from China.”
Also in the past year, the company has increased its inventory in Sequim to expedite fast delivery to customers.
“By 2020, we plan to put in banks of ‘lights out’ [automated] machines to run 18 hours a day and we’ll keep expanding our product lines,” Greimes said.
“We need to grow our sales force, so our goal is to hire more customer specialists. The next step is Phase 4, the plan to offer stock offerings and raise capital.”
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Patricia Morrison Coate is a reporter with the Olympic Peninsula News Group, which is composed of Sound Publishing newspapers Peninsula Daily News, Sequim Gazette and Forks Forum. Reach her at pcoate@sequimgazette.com.