Though it has expanded its focus, McCoy Machinery Corp. (formerly McCoy-Ellison) has stayed true to its core products – complete warp preparation equipment, tension control systems and specialty creels. The company is the only remaining U.S. machinery company that offers beginning-to-end supply of warp prep machinery, parts and solutions, he said. A privately held company with manufacturing facilities here, McCoy Machinery serves the warping, knitting, technical fabrics, tire cord, carbon fiber and composites markets.

 

On November 24, the company will mark its 50th year in business – a strong testament to the company’s adaptability to market changes.

 

“We’ve survived through the years because we’ve constantly changed, innovated and diversified,” McCoy said. “We always saw our key market as very strong on the filament side. We weren’t the strongest players in the cotton or cotton/poly spun business, though we made very good systems for that, but our U.S. focus was primarily filament.”

 

Above all others, the one differentiator for McCoy Machinery is quality products, he added. Its motto, “A Tradition in Quality,” was adopted in the 1990s and is posted on signs throughout its manufacturing floor.

 

“The big cog in the wheel that holds everything together here is the quality of the machinery we’ve built,” said Kevin Ahlstrom, the company’s sales director. “There are machines we built in the 1960s that are still out there running today. So they’re pretty robust. And even with the electromagnetic tension devices, you would think that at some point they would dry up and go away. But people are going back to them and telling us, ‘we’ve tried this and we’ve tried that, but we’re going back to what we did 30 years ago because it worked.’ And it still works today. It still produces the quality they require.”

 

That quality attribute is directly tied to the fact McCoy Machinery has always been an engineering-driven company, McCoy said. Everything it creates is engineered to a certain degree, he added. During its first several decades in business, the company made virtually everything from scratch – from package holders, to pins and clips, to brackets. And it still owns custom-made and engineered molds from its early years.

 

Expansion through various means

 

Diversification has come through various means. The company has expanded into the tire cord industry with a specialized creel. It also offers commission warping. And it has broadened its warping and creel systems for areas such as POY (partially oriented yarn), draw warping and composites.

 

For the steel-belted tire industry, McCoy Machinery has adapted its creel design for braided steel wire to be used in rubber calendars, which serve several big-name tire customers.

 

For contract warping, it operates three systems at its 65,000-square-foot facility here, providing services for several companies.

 

On the carbon fiber/composites side, the company now designs specific equipment that targets pre-preg, coating, weaving and filament winding across the entire composites industry.

 

An outgrowth from its commission warping services is MMC Textiles, a Carthage, N.C.-based knitting company McCoy founded three years ago with Rick Walker. The company knits polyester technical textiles, along with fibers such as fiberglass, Kevlar, acrylic and monofilament. McCoy Machinery provides some contract warping for MMC.

 

“That business has grown as fast as we could handle it,” McCoy said. “We just went to three shifts and added more floor space.”

 

McCoy Machinery also reconditions warping systems at a fraction of the cost of a new one, Ahlstrom said.

 

“And the reconditioned systems are far superior to the average used equipment found in the market, which has proven to be quite popular and successful for us and our customers,” he said. “We also recondition drive and control systems for any type of equipment as well as provide new and reconditioned tension control systems to give our customers the edge in performance, and a noted reduction in the capital outlay.”

 

The company learned that diversity was the key as the industry began to see its good fortunes change in the late 1990s, McCoy said.

 

“That first crash taught me to diversify and always look for more variety,” he said. “Today, we could see one area almost go away and it wouldn’t kill us. It wouldn’t help but it wouldn’t kill us.”

 

Other moves

 

McCoy Machinery has expanded its current facility several times since moving to its current location in 1980, McCoy said. During the U.S. industry’s heyday, the company operated a foundry and machine shop in Lancaster, S.C. and a fab shop in Lanett, Ala., employing a total of about 400 people. It outsources most of that work now.

 

In 2002, the company expanded internationally by forming a joint venture in Wuxu, China, to supply parts to the company. McCoy Machinery opened a new facility for the JV there in 2008. Each partner has its own sales and service department that supports the other partner. McCoy Machinery makes equipment for high-tech areas such as fiberglass systems in Asia, which are serviced by the Chinese arm.

 

In 2004, McCoy and his brother Bruce founded Warp Development Corporation, a commission warping company also based in Monroe. Bruce McCoy was then co-owner of McCoy-Ellison with his brother at the time, and the two have since bought out each other’s half of the other company. So Bruce McCoy is 100 percent owner of Warp Development and Dan McCoy is 100 percent owner of McCoy Machinery.

 

Today, McCoy Machinery employs 28 people and operates as a lean management organization, McCoy said. Most are long-time employees who work well together in a family atmosphere, he added.

 

“I’m very committed to our employees,” McCoy said. “They’ve been here a long time. I feel like I need to support them the same way I need to support my family. We all know each other well, know our responsibilities and work well as a team.”

 

Such an environment is one of the main reasons Ahlstrom, who started with the company 18 years ago, decided to recently return to McCoy Machinery after 14 years working with other textile machinery suppliers.

 

“I welcomed the opportunity to get back to working with a small, family company,” he said. “I also saw a great future on the composites side of things, and I have some understanding of that side of the market. And I relished the chance to contribute and help Dan’s company. Dan is committed to keeping the tradition rolling. Dan has been able to survive is because he has been very creative. He is always open to new ideas and opportunities.”

 

Ahlstrom, McCoy said, brings great product knowledge and familiarity with the company and its target market.

 

McCoy also has a son, Matt, who is following in his family’s footsteps as the company’s customer service manager.

 

Positive signs

 

McCoy said he is encouraged by the positive signs he’s seeing in the U.S. textile industry. “After things bottomed out about two or three years ago, we’re now seeing expansion and modernization in our sector – not so much brick and mortar, but companies are starting to spend money to upgrade their machines and invest for their future. So that’s real promising.

 

“We’re expanding into areas where we see new domestic opportunities, and we see opportunities in Asia in textiles because of their increasing quality consciousness,” he added. “We’re also expanding our market presence in the tire industry. So I see growth in several areas, including composites. Like textiles, composites is a big word. There are a lot of opportunities within that. There are 10 or 12 different types of machines or processes in that area, but in the end it boils down to controlling of the yarn.”

 

McCoy added that the company reinvents itself virtually every day to stay ahead of the curve.

 

“And that’s what it has taken to stay alive,” he said. “I’ve never really stopped and said this is where we want to be. It’s always a matter of looking for different things to do. To me, I always keep an open mind and look at all possibilities. I can’t tell you what we’ll be like two years from now. We could be totally different, just based on opportunities that arise.”