Washington Manufacturing Awards 2014: Manufacturer of the Year (Midsize Firms)

WINNER

The Gear Works

Seattle | thegearworks.com

The Gear Works has been around since 1946, with the company now in its second generation of family ownership and thoroughly modern in its development of a new market: wind turbines. The Gear Works brought on employees, equipment and technology to make the components for maintaining and repairing electricity-generating turbines. Those components may be big but they also require finely machined close tolerances. To give it a further competitive advantage in this market, The Gear Works expanded fourfold the capacity of its repair and test center (including a temperature-controlled metrology lab), making it one of the few places to do the sophisticated testing needed for the production of high-speed, high-horsepower gearing.

SILVER AWARD

Emerald Recycling

Seattle | emeraldnw.com

Recycling is more than gathering up waste materials. Its also figuring out how those materials can be reused, instead of putting them in a landfill. This is what Emerald Recycling does with industrial fluids. A division of Emerald Services, the firm annually makes more than 15 million gallons of low-sulfur marine diesel from spent lubricating oil. Its just one example of the reduce, reuse, recycle approach. Glycol and solvents can be put through vacuum distillation to produce new products. Doing so locally has another benefit: Less fuel is consumed hauling those waste products out of state for processing.