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Below is our recent interview with Kevin Peguero, Digital Marketing Manager at Astro Pak:
Q: Kevin, can you tell us something more about the company?
A: Astro Pak has been the leading provider of passivation, high purity and precision cleaning services in North America since 1959. “Passivation” is the process of making stainless steel chemically non-reactive or “passive” and more resistant to corrosion. We are the leader in that field as well as in meeting the critical cleaning and surface conditioning requirements for a myriad of industries. Our customers range from biopharmaceutical and food and beverage manufacturers to the aerospace and healthcare industrial giants. We offer both on-site services with mobile cleanrooms as well as our own state-of-the-art cleanroom and shop facilities strategically located across the country. Astro Pak is privately held with headquarters in Costa Mesa, CA
Q: Tell us more about your history. How did the company start?
A: We were founded in 1959 at the dawn of the space race between the U.S. and Soviet Union. Carl Verheyen and Jim St. Clair saw that this technological rivalry created a vast opportunity for the small precision cleaning contractor. They began providing services from the first office in Southern California. Astro Pak secured various approvals to precision clean components and hardware for all major missile manufacturers as well as other aerospace clients, which fueled the firm’s desire to take their chemical- cleaning success from the Aerospace industry into several other sectors.
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Q: Clearly, you’ve succeeded, how did you do that?
A: As we like to say, “Friendly service. Unparalleled expertise. Advanced cleaning processes.” But, the story is much bigger. Carl’s son, Ken Verheyen, became the CEO of Astro Pak and set his sights on guiding Astro Pak to a position of industry leadership through delivering excellence. To achieve this, Mr. Verheyen was driven to create a great experience for his team members and customers.
Astro Pak has grown considerably over the years, particularly during this last decade. In addition to opening new locations and offering new services, we’ve also innovated new techniques that are exclusively ours. One in particular is our UltraPass® Passivation which is not only very effective, but it’s environmentally friendly which makes it suitable for more applications and reduces the facility down time.
Through this planning and innovation, Astro Pak has become one of the largest and most respected precision cleaning & surface treatment technology contractors in North America. Astro Pak hopes to sustain that growth while never losing sight of our most important purpose – delighting our team members and customers through the pursuit of excellence guided by a clear vision and a strong set of values.
Q: You’ve recently been named one of the best places to work in Orange County; could you tell us something more?
A: We were nominated for that recognition by our team members. The award is designed “to identify, recognize and honor the best places of employment in Orange County” (California). It’s largely done through a survey of the employees that asks them to rank their engagement and satisfaction on a five-point scale which is augmented by a couple of open-ended questions as well as an analysis of the business’ workplace demographics, policies and practices. We consider it a great honor to have been selected and a validation of our leadership’s passion for treating our team members as part of an extended family.
Q: Can you give us insights into your services?
A: As was mentioned earlier, we offer our services both at the client’s location as well as receiving or transporting their equipment to one of our cleanrooms located around the country.
Certainly, there’s no way to transport a giant product mixing tank – and even if it were possible, the down-time would be impractical – so we dispatch our trained personnel to the job site along with our proprietary equipment and perform the service there to the same high standards. In addition to the passivation of equipment that’s been in service, we help commission new systems so that they are ready to start handling product without the risk of contamination from the construction process. Beyond that, Astro Pak also performs sanitization, electropolishing and even helium leak testing.
Astro Pak crews have been hard at work cleaning water treatment systems in Hong Kong as well as helping NASA prepare its new Space Launch System at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. Those are just a couple of examples of clients who sought us out because of our high standards.
We just relocated our facilities in Northern California and soon, Southern California to accommodate growing customer demand. In both cases, not only did we expand into larger facilities, but we added greater capabilities and improved levels of precision.
Q: That’s quite impressive. Is there any other way in which Astro Pak is the industry leader?
A: Absolutely! Our commitment to excellence is top down. Many of our leadership members serve on oversight boards, helping to set the standards by which the industry operates. Patrick Banes, Astro Pak’s Northeast Technical Sales Manager was recently appointed to the chairmanship of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Bioprocessing Equipment Surface Finish subcommittee. While that sounds like a mouthful, what it means is that he leads the oversight of establishing the criteria for metallic and polymeric materials that come in contact with pharmaceuticals as it is being made. The committee will analyze the current standards, along with new technology and processes to ensure that purity is not compromised by the equipment.
And, in the field and cleanrooms, all of Astro Pak’s technicians fulfill 26 hours of start-up training and maintain OSHA certifications. We also ensure more than 50 hours of general and skill-set specific training and certifications are completed each year.
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Q: What else makes Astro Pak stand out from its competition?
A: Again, our personnel make a big difference. Our staff of engineers, chemists, research & development teams and PhDs develop new chemistries and processes each year to ensure that we deliver improved efficacy, greater efficiencies, green solutions, new services and reduced costs.
It’s no wonder that some of the world’s most prestigious institutions including MIT, Cal-Tech, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and JPL have sought our guidance and consultation on projects such as LIGO, LUX-ZEPLIN “Dark Matter” Experiment, and Mars 2020
Moreover, Astro Pak routinely responds “same day” to emergency requests for immediate service. Whether deploying to the client’s site or expediting an order at one of our facilities, we will meet their time-sensitive requirements. Our team has performed some herculean turn-arounds including processing 250 high-priority items for Boeing that needed to be done in under 48 hours. In response to an emergency with a supplier, our technicians received, processed and ship back to Boeing within six hours, parts that were needed to complete a 777 airliner in only 6 hours. And that was during the holidays- no less.
In addition to investing in our team members, Astro Pak is continuously investing in equipment and facilities. The Northern California and Florida locations are just the most recent. Our California cleanroom just received a specialty oven to process parts for the Mars rover and our staff is constantly developing new and proprietary equipment so our technicians can continue to outperform.
Lastly, as they say, “the job’s not done until the paperwork is done” and that is very true with the industries we serve. Astro Pak provides comprehensive certification documentation packages that comply with QMS/cGMP guidelines. Our certification packages are frequently used as the standard for numerous public and private sectors and entities.
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