The tenants that currently operate at Satsop Business Park are typically smaller-scale operations compared to Overstock.com and a large marijuana growing operation — most have less than 15 employees, some as few as one or two. While they may not have the economic impact of the larger new tenants, they certainly are a unique blend of companies, ranging from the very high tech to a father and son salsa maker.
Rifles
Advanced Combat Technologies makes precision billet rifles. “Some are custom ordered, and I have a product line that I usually have in stock,” said Cody Miller, the man who builds, markets and sells the rifles out of a milling facility near the base of the westernmost cooling tower. These weapons are unique, solidly made and come in a variety of calibers and unique finishes. In fact, GH Coatings in Montesano does a lot of the cerakote work on Miller’s rifles.
Miller precision mills each upper and lower assembly out of a solid block of forged aluminum and uses the highest end barrels and other components to create an accurate rifle, available in calibers ranging from standard .223 caliber to a real thumper, the .50 Beowulf. Miller is a one man show, producing anywhere from five to 10 rifles a month; sometimes more, sometimes less. Find Miller and his line of rifles online at a-c-ti.com or on Facebook.
Salsa
The father-son team of Chayne and Kalan King use the commercial kitchen in the Technology Campus Building to produce a line of fresh salsas that, in just two years’ time, has made quite a splash across the region.
The company, Brady Homestead — named for the family’s home near Brady — will officially celebrate two years in business in May. But Chayne started making what’s now called HBBP Salsa years ago in North Dakota. Chayne was living in a house with a bunch of other people while he was trying to start up a wireless communications company and, at one point, made salsa for guests of his business associate.
“It was a big hit, and I was just asked repeatedly to continue to make it. I took tips and advice from people saying what they liked,” he said. “I saw how the flavors changed over about two years, and spent another year getting it ready to go to market.”
Chayne says a couple of things spurred his decision to go into the salsa business. One was an offer to buy his recipe from a “club where executive type oil people go. I politely declined without even asking how much they were willing to pay.”
When he returned to the area he was further encouraged by Josh Loveall, who now runs the popular All Wrapped Up bakery, restaurant and coffee shop in Montesano. “I made some for him and he said it was the best salsa he had ever had, and that I should sell it,” said Chayne. That prompted him to do the research and work it took to take the product to market. After a tasting in Montesano it was official: HBBP Salsa was in business.
The line’s popularity continues to grow. Chayne said he recently bought a merchandising cooler to feature his product in Wynooche Meats and Deli in Montesano and “it’s been worth every penny.” That location, one of the newest of a handful in the area where his product is sold, has become their number one sales location.
Chayne was familiar with the commercial kitchen at the park before moving to North Dakota and says, “It’s kind of funny years later I came back and found that it was available.” The father and son duo prepares, jars, labels and transports everything themselves. As the business continues to grow, he is in the process of reviewing potential new additions to his product line. For now, find out where you can find this salsa at the HBBP Facebook page.
And why HBBP? Not even the salsa’s creator can tell you that. While in North Dakota, “We didn’t want to just name it Chayne’s Salsa, so we are trying to give it a name, like nine of us in this house,” said Chayne. “So we came up with these initials in the research and development process and somehow just lost track of it.”
Natural gas
A few years ago a Massachusetts-based natural gas supply company, Xpress Natural Gas, was attracted to existing infrastructure in the park and now trucks compressed natural gas from the park to a growing client list that includes Port Townsend Paper Corp. in Jefferson County, which just recently made the switch from oil to compressed natural gas.
“We are a trucked natural gas company; that is, we provide compressed natural gas to locations that are underserved, like Aberdeen, or are not served at all, and establish a continuous gas flow for customers,” said Xpress Natural Gas Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing Matt Smith. “We call it a virtual pipeline.”
That virtual pipeline is established by tapping into an existing high-capacity pipeline for supply.
“In Elma we tapped into the same Williams pipeline lateral that supplies the (Grays Harbor Energy) power plant and co-located our terminal with the existing infrastructure,” said Smith. “With a gas supply established, we compress the gas into trailers and deliver it like any fuel to customer sites, where we connect the trucks to equipment that discharges the gas at a normal pressure and constant flow — just like a pipeline.” The Williams pipeline is part of that company’s natural gas pipeline network, this one supplying Washington, Oregon and Idaho from a plant in southwest Wyoming.
Smith says Xpress employs about a dozen people currently in the state, all based in the Satsop Business Park location, “and we’re ramping up as our business grows.”
Acoustic testing
NWAA Labs is “an acoustic testing facility for materials,” said Ron Sauro, a former NASA scientist who runs the two-person operation, which includes the two largest reverberation chambers in the world. These chambers are used by a variety of clients to test how different materials used in construction and manufacturing respond to sound; how well they absorb it, or deflect it.
“We test windows and doors, suspended ceilings, carpeting, that kind of stuff, to verify how they work acoustically.” Their clients include chip board manufacturers, Armstrong carpets, “mostly manufacturers, architects and contractors.” The largest reverberation chamber is 26,000-plus cubic feet and can accurately measure to very low frequencies; the second is 23,500-plus cubic feet and is the source room for transmission loss measurements — basically the number of sound decibels that are stopped by a material type at a given frequency.
