Welome to the first installment of the Vineyard View – a periodic feature written by Ed and Janet Puckett, the owners of APG and APG of Chesapeake.  Their home office (and APG corporate headquarters) is on the same site as the other Puckett family venture – Lovingston Winery.  You can check out the winery (a mere three hour drive from our Chesapeake plant) at http://lovingstonwinery.com.  They’ll be dropping in from time to time with company updates, winery news and anything else that stokes the literary fires:

 

With our recently revised website, we thought it would be good to re-tell the story of how we got here.  APG of Garland, Texas was purchased by Janet and Ed Puckett from GNB Technologies (formerly Gould National Batteries) in 1996.  Prior to the acquisition, Janet had worked at the Atlanta office of the accounting firm Arthur Andersen.  Ed had held managerial positions with several battery recycling and metal manufacturing firms including Western Lead, National Lead, Seitzingers, National Smelting, and GNB.

At that time, APG produced only powdered metals including lead, tin, and nonferrous alloys.  These products were used in radiation shielding, oil and gas exploration, and automotive parts.  There were 4 employees.  When oil prices dropped to around $10/barrel in the late 90’s and Janet and Ed couldn’t get the rent lowered from landlord Bob Quenell (a giant in the recycling and battery industry), it was decided to enter the negative expander business as an alternate source of supply.  A partnership was struck between APG and TEXEX® Partners – represented by Mr. Quenell, Dr. Joe Orsino (who invented many negative expander formulas still in use today), and Mr. George Collins, former president of golf car battery maker Alco Battery.

While not necessarily “made in heaven”, this match proved to be a success.  APG Garland grew to 25 employees and 24/7 operations.  Demand for TEXEX® Expander continued to grow.

It became clear that expansion of negative expander capacity was necessary.  This is where wine comes in.

Stay tuned for more…

Tags: APG, APG of Chesapeake, Atomized Products Group, battery expander, expander, lead powder, lead-acid battery, Lovingston Winery, metal powder, negative expander, Vineyard View

Categorised in: The Vineyard View

This post was written by Atomized Products Group