Northeastern Electronics to expand plant, workforce as sales double

ELBRIDGE — Northeastern Electronics Co. is growing rapidly and expects to keep expanding.

At its facility on Route 5 in Elbridge, Northeastern makes electronic cables, wires, and assemblies used in computers, telephones, data centers, robotics, and other products. Sales last year grew some 40 percent, says Brent Peltz, territory manager.

This year the company is on track to grow sales by 100 percent, he says, hitting $10 million.

To handle that growth, the business is planning to double its workforce from the current 50 to 100 by the end of the year. It also has designs in hand for a new 18,000-square-foot building that Northeastern Electronics is planning for the adjacent lot east of its current facility. When completed in the first quarter of 2019, that building will nearly double the company’s space.

Brent Peltz, 28, and his brother Stephen, 30, explain that growth is coming from several sources, including healthy growth among current clients.

“Demand is hot right now,” says Stephen, who heads business development. He says customers are turning to them for more product to meet growing demand for their products.

In addition, Brent says, there is a drive among manufacturers to find American sources for goods they may have been buying from Chinese manufacturers or other overseas suppliers. Reliability is one reason.

He says every day some four shipping containers are lost. That’s four shipping containers full of goods that may be vital for a manufacturer to meet customer deadlines. To avoid that problem, some companies are choosing to source domestically.

A walk though the air-conditioned facility finds assemblers at work and testers checking each piece. Sitting before a laptop computer, a tester uses a handheld microscope to ensure that the stripping machine did not nick the outer braided shield of a coaxial cable. On the laptop screen, the stripped end of the cable can be seen 10-times actual size.

“We test 100 percent of our products; each one gets tested,” Stephen says. In contrast, he says of those buying from Chinese suppliers, “they’ll be lucky if they test one or two cables in the whole lot.”

Other customers require goods be made in America. That is particularly true of companies doing business with the U.S. military.

That works to Northeastern’s advantage the brothers explain: Everything at Northeastern Electronics  is made in America. The wires and fittings that arrive at the firm to be fashioned to wire harnesses and other goods are certified by their distributors to be American-made.

The company’s status as a small business, under federal guidelines, also helps it qualify as a subcontractor for defense work. Four of the nation’s top five defense contractors turn to Northeastern Electronics  for parts, says Stephen.

Beyond made-in-America, Stephen says the company’s nimbleness has helped it land business. Northeastern’s size and processes allows it to offer short lead times for customers who need product fast, he says. In addition the company has developed processes that allow it to respond to customer inquiries in 48 hours or less, and often in only half a day.

That quickness is matched by the company’s ability to offer short lead times, Stephen says. While other, bigger companies may take weeks or months to turn around an order, Northeastern’s size and flexibility allows it to meet tough deadlines — something many customers like because it lets them meet their customers’ short deadlines.

Along with defense contractors, Northeastern’s customers include large well-known brands, including IBM. The relationship with IBM goes back to the company’s beginnings in 1982 when Brent and Stephen’s father, Steven Peltz, started the company. In those days, Northeastern Electronics  made 20,000 power cables a month for IBM’s groundbreaking personal computer.

Today, Brent and Stephen have management responsibilities for the company while Steven acts as an adviser. The company is in the process of transitioning ownership from the father to the sons. “It’s happening now,” says Stephen.

Beyond the anticipated construction and hirings, Northeastern Electronics  has other plans for the future. It is at work on achieving AS9100, a certification standard for the aircraft, space, and defense industry.

And in an outbuilding, work has begun on a “clean room” that will allow the company to compete at another level, producing cables that are suitable for mission-critical use in such things as weapon systems, says Brent.

That project is being led by a former Lockheed Martin engineer. Northeastern Electronics  is able to attract such people by paying 20 percent to 30 percent above the going rate, Brent says. “They feel a bit more appreciated,” says Brent. 

To continue the company’s growth, Brent is looking for more strategic customers, those who that can help Northeastern gain credibility with clients in different industries. For instance, the firm gained a client out West who has helped the company make connections in the oil and gas industry.

As things are, the company offers overtime to employees to keep up with customer demand. “We even had people working here the Fourth of July,” says Stephen.

With more demand expected, Brent says the 18,000-square-foot building, which still needs town-board approval, will be built so that one wall can be easily removed for future expansion bringing the entire complex to some 60,000 square feet in 2020.

And, he says, the plan is to add 50 more people to work in that expanded area, tripling today’s current workforce. Recruiting those workers will be helped by the company’s location between Syracuse and Auburn, say Brent. The company can attract “top-level employees” from both labor markets, he says, including fresh graduates from Syracuse University to help the company continue to grow.