Tempco celebrates our 50th Anniversary!

A week ago Tempco celebrated its 50th Anniversary. There were speeches, there was food, there were service recognitions and there was camaraderie. At the end of the day a small group of employees got together at a local establishment, and I joined them. As I sat down and looked around, I realized that I was the only one at the table who had known Tempco’s founder, Fermin Adames, Sr. It made me realize how glad I was that Tempco’s president, Fermin Alan, had told his Dad’s story earlier that afternoon to everyone at the celebration. And I wondered, how many people outside of Tempco have heard the story? So I asked if I could share it.

Fermin G. Adames was born in Mexico to parents from Spain and France. At the age of 16 he came to the United States. He went to school, he learned English and he met his future wife. He enlisted in the army and was stationed at Fort Bragg. He got married, had a son and left the army after his enlistment. He joined the workforce with several jobs, one of which was making womens undergarments.

Tempco employees gathered on Friday, October 21st to celebrate.

Then, he landed in the heating element business where he found his niche. After several years, Fermin began thinking about starting his own business in the industry because he saw ways to improve both the engineering and manufacturing and he wanted to do so on his own terms. He made a deal with his wife – if the baby she was carrying was a boy, he would stay where he was at Fast Heat and continue to work for someone else. If it was a girl, he would start his own business.

You guessed it, their second child was a girl, and Tempco, short for Temperature Company, was also born in 1972.

Taking delivery of the annealing furnace at the Franklin Park location in 1984

Arriving at the groundbreaking for one of our current buildings in Wood Dale in 1987

Transporting and checking a process heating system before shipping, 2010

Standing with a group of people who were working to clear snow away from the building after a blizzard, 2011

Tempco began by manufacturing Cartridge Heaters and Band Heaters in a small, 1500 ft. facility. Fermin’s goal was to make quality product that stood the test of time. While doing so, he developed strong industry and customer relationships. He inspired the people he worked with and who worked for him to do their best. Today, we manufacture over 100 distinct product lines from several product families:

Cast-In Heaters and thermal components
Infrared Heaters
Strip Heaters
Enclosure Heaters
Drum Heaters
Circulation Heaters
Screw Plug Heaters
Duct Heaters
Flanged Immersion Heaters
Silicone Rubber Heaters
Shroud Systems for extrusion processing
Temperature Sensors
Power and Temperature Control Products

We have 174,000 square ft. between two facilities with almost 500 employees. And almost 15% of those employees have been with Tempco for more than 25 years, half its lifetime.

Tempco Strip Heater from 1978
This heater, manufactured in our original Schiller Park facility,
remained in use until 2018.

Our first employee has been with Tempco for 49 years.

It has been 10 years since Fermin Sr. passed away unexpectedly just before Tempco celebrated it’s 40th anniversary. Since then, Tempco has continued to manufacture quality products and to serve industry with the same dedication it has always had.