ReGENco Proves Success Can Be Found in the Power Industry

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Written by William Whitney, Senior Correspondent for Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated: Houston, Texas). In an age of faltering small businneses, downsizing and plant closings - ReGENco LLC is rising like the proverbial Phoenix - and flying high! Based in the historic one hundred year old 150,000 square foot Allis Chalmers plant in West Allis, Wisconsin, the fledgling company is coming of age - thanks to good old American ingenuity! Cast aside by the merger of Siemens and Westinghouse, this emerging entity is a product of local and private investment trust and management dedication. Working with an initial capitalization of just more than $6 million dollars, the relatively newly formed organization has managed to post revenues of $20 million after just more than four years of existence.

Industrial Information Resources caught up with Glen Appleton (ReGENco, Vice President of Marketing) at the Electric Power 2004 Exposition in Baltimore, Maryland this past week. "We service steam turbines - any size; generators - any size; and are moving into combustion turbines," says Mr. Appleton.

Seeming so uncommon in present day American enterprise, ReGENco has managed to reinvent the wheel and retain their existing customer base focusing on service and maintenance services. Originally targeting power utilities from an epicenter in Milwaukee, Wisconsin the company now holds a customer base from Puerto Rico to Alaska and is rapidly expanding into such venues as pulp paper and other industrial entities.

"Why is it working?" says Mr. Appleton, "it is essentially because we are skilled and experienced troubleshooters - not order takers." Coupled with a three-tiered support from Midwest utilities, local investors, and a management stake ReGENco brings decades of expertise to the table.

Notably, other than generic parts, the firm actually crafts all of the required replacement parts such as retaining rings and turbine blades in the West Allis facility. Engineering service support is provided to customers on site with the assistance of alliance partnerships.

Part of the success equation, according to Mr. Appleton, "is that as a result of deregulation many utilities are looking to outsourcing of maintenance services as a cost effective solution."

And the future is bright for companies such as ReGENco as core energy plants are aging and being replaced by gas turbine facilities that require far more scheduled maintenance. On average a generation facility hosts four or five staff engineers, while ReGENco holds approximately 25 seasoned engineers. Having actually been the OEM prior to their emergence into the dedicated service sector the company fashions themselves as a "quasi OEM" directed toward the maintenance and service sectors.

Considering that 2004 is an election year and IGCC (Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle) technology has been slow to initialize, Mr. Appleton sees 2010 as the "watershed year" for his firm and the energy industry.

Regardless, ReGENco has turned a seemingly bad hand into a trump card in a difficult economic environment.