Pittsburgh Tribune-Review
Canonsburg's NABCO builds devices that contain explosions
By Thomas Olson
Thursday, May 21, 2009
Police uncovered an illegal fireworks operation near Palm Beach, Fla., three years ago after the ring leader clumsily blew himself up in the recreational vehicle he used as a lab. The blast broke all the windows in homes for blocks around.
But that was just the tip of the threat. A nearby warehouse stored 7,000 M-1000s, each 10 times more powerful than an M-80 fireworks explosive. The storage facility was near a mobile home park.
The bomb squad's response: three trips into the warehouse to remove the giant cache of illegal explosives, using a spherical containment vessel manufactured by NABCO Inc. in Canonsburg.
"If that warehouse had gone up, the damage would have been pretty substantial," said Ralf Kreling, bomb squad commander of the Palm Beach Sheriff's Office. His team placed the explosives in one of NABCO's 64-inch diameter vessels and transported them to a range 20 miles away to blow them up.
"It was a heck of an explosion," said Kreling.
NABCO's vessels can take just about anything, whether the incendiary device is chemical, biological, radioactive or nuclear. Their steel construction is as strong as a submarine hull, said Chief Executive Frank Tobin.
"We had our equipment out there in full force at the president's inauguration, but you just didn't see it," said Tobin.
"We were also at the Super Bowl," he said at NABCO's Washington, Pa., manufacturing plant. The company employs about 30 people there and in Canonsburg.
NABCO mainly serves military services, law enforcement and homeland security agencies throughout the United States and 20 other countries. Customers include the Army, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Chicago's O'Hare International Airport and foreign security agencies from Beijing to Berlin. The company says it serves 85 percent of the nation's bomb squads from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh.
NABCO's top-of-the-line product — dubbed the Total Containment Vessel — allows clients to blow up explosive devices inside it without allowing any particles or gas to escape. These containment vessels most commonly weigh about 10,000 pounds.
Total containment vessels are "infinitely reusable," said Tobin, a professional engineer who was tapped as CEO a year ago because of his international business background, including at large defense contractors.
Other models will allow gas to escape after an explosion, making them less expensive, the CEO said without disclosing prices.
Those models typically sell to mail rooms and airports and allow suspicious devices to be X-rayed when placed inside. "That way, you don't have to shut down an airport," said Tobin. The average airport shutdown costs airlines about $1 million per hour, he said.
NABCO makes custom trailers to haul the containment vessels. Plus, it trains client personnel on handling and transporting suspicious devices.
"The market for this stuff is immense — airports, hospitals, courthouses," said Jerry Loyd, former assistant federal security director for law enforcement at Dallas-Ft. Worth International Airport. "Containment vessels move the threat away from people, instead of having to move the people away from the threat."
The Allegheny County Police Bomb Squad has had a NABCO vessel for three years, said Sgt. Albert Wessel. The squad took the vessel to 22 incidents of suspicious packages last year, he said, but never had to explode one in the vessel.
The NABCO name has nothing to do with its current business, which started in 1986, said Tobin. But the brand is so well-established in the markets it serves that the company won't change it.
NABCO originally stood for the "National Annealing Box Co.," which had served the steelmaking industry since its founding in 1895.
The company is owned by private equity firm Main Street Capital, Canonsburg. The acquisition opportunity fell into its lap in late 2006.
"They were on the same floor as us, just down the hall, but we never knew what they did," said principal Gerald Prado. As it turned out, the owners — Sam Michaels and founders Randy and Jay Markey — wanted to sell NABCO, and Main Street saw international growth potential.
"We liked the niche they operate in. It's a hot issue since 9/11, unfortunately," said Prado.
