Lighting up the world Z D Wire Products competes at international level

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Just east of the Skowhegan town line in Norridgewock, an unmarked steel building sits by the side of the road. A few motorcycles and a pickup truck are parked out front, classic rock tunes blast through an open door and a tangy metallic smell hangs in the air.

This is Z D Wire Products Inc., the place where more than 75 percent of all fluorescent lamps in the world begin, according to the company. Z D Wire supplies cathode wires to fluorescent light manufacturers in China, the Czech Republic, England, France, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Mexico and the United States.

The U.S. space program uses Z D Wire products in lights aboard the Challenger space shuttle, and the company manufactured the 56,000 cathodes that were in the lights at the World Trade Center. Anywhere there is a fluorescent light, Z D Wire will be found.

Owner Russ Denis’ father, Joseph Denis, invented the unique process used at the Z D Wire manufacturing facility to create the specialized filaments used in fluorescent lighting.

“The uniqueness of this process is that I have a shelf full of books that say this is impossible,” Russ Denis said this week.

Joseph Denis invented the method in his garage in New Jersey in 1968. The next year, Denis, a native of Waterville, and his wife, Katie Ouilette, a native of Skowhegan, moved back to Maine and founded Z D Wire Products Inc.

The company originally serviced the three major lighting manufacturers: General Electric, Sylvania, and Westinghouse.

But as more and more manufacturing jobs were outsourced to foreign countries, Z D Wire’s customer base expanded internationally. Today the company is the last of its kind in the U.S. and one of only a handful in the world, according to Russ Denis, who has taken over the family business since his father retired.

The shop is dirty and noisy on this particular July day. Fans blow the air around, trying to counteract the humidity, but mostly only succeed in ratcheting up the noise level.

Five employees diligently monitor machines as yards and yards of raw wire about the thickness of a coat hanger are drawn through a series of ever-smaller dies that can stretch and mold the wire into a filament finer than a single strand of hair.

The machinery whines and wire flies off spools as it is drawn through the funnel-shaped dies and through a soap bath that cools and lubricates the wire as it is stretched and reduced in size. The wires are crafted to the exact diameter specified by the order – ranging from 64 hundredths of an inch in diameter to two thousandths of an inch – before being rewound onto other spools.

Most of the wires at the facility go through yet another process before being shipped out. Fine tungsten wire is wrapped in a tight coil around a strand of aluminum wire until the aluminum wire is completely covered. Then that tungsten-aluminum wire is wrapped tightly around another aluminum wire.

“Eventually, the result is about 24 inches of tungsten in one inch of space,” Denis explained.

This final product is what is shipped out to the fluorescent light manufacturers around the globe. When those manufacturers run the woven tungsten-aluminum wire through an acid bath, the aluminum is dissolved, leaving only the tightly coiled tungsten wire behind. This is what is cut to specified lengths and used as cathodes inside fluorescent lamps.

Every fluorescent lamp, including incandescent lights, has a cathode at each end that emits electrons. Those electrons then flow down the tube and cause the phosphor – the white powder inside the tube – to glow.

Z D Wire boasts that its cathode wires and other wires are second to none in the industry. Denis takes special pride in pointing out that the Z D in the company name stands for “zero defects” and that its products “have a 99.995 percent acceptance rate.”

That’s quite a feat considering the company manufactures about 25 million miles of wire a year.

At the center of all the din and activity at the plant earlier this week, Denis was joking with his workers, roasting corn and cooking steaks on an outside grill, and complaining about doing business in Maine.

Even though his business is thriving and the popularity of new incandescent, energy-saving bulbs will likely secure his company’s success well into the future, Denis said doing business in Maine is nickel-and-diming him to death.

“It is easy for me to compete anywhere in the world, but I can’t compete against the state of Maine,” he said. “When my father first brought the business to Maine, all of our business was in the U.S., Puerto Rico and Canada. Now there is only one company left in the U.S. that I deal with. This little shop has remained competitive with anyone in the world but Maine itself is our biggest enemy.”

Denis said that income taxes, unemployment taxes, workers’ compensation, high health insurance costs, surcharges and even permit fees are hurting his bottom line. He declined, however, to be specific about production costs or annual sales figures.

“This state is robbing Peter to pay Paul,” he said.

As company after company leaves Maine and the manufacturing sector dries up, Denis said his company is now at the “end of the food chain.”

“Maine is a net importer of goods. I can ship anything from here, cheaply,” he said. “But bringing goods in is another story. I pay dearly.”

While he wouldn’t divulge specific shipping costs, he offered that just one delivery of the raw wire coming in can weigh 25,000 pounds and be a major expense.

But he said it is the increased fees and taxes from the state that leave him concerned the most. “Every aspect of dealing with the state has gone up,” he said. “It is getting more and more difficult to do business here.”

Nevertheless, Denis maintains that it is the quality of life and the quality of his workers that keep him in Maine. “I love living here,” he said.

His employees are loyal – the least senior man just left in March after 17 years. “They have flexible workdays,” Denis said. “They know what to do and they do it. If they want to work at night, that’s fine. I don’t care when they come and go as long as we put the order out.

“Back in the day, when the shoe shops laid off workers, they had a constant pool of replacements,” he said. “It takes me four to six months to train an employee before he can be left alone.”

Besides offering the flexible hours, Denis said he pays his employees well and provides health insurance to keep them around.

When asked what the future holds for Z D Wire, Denis frankly said, “I don’t know. I didn’t see it here five years ago but we have been able to make the shift to out-of-the-country sales. To think we are doing business with China goes against every grain of thinking. I guess the bottom line is, we do it better than anyone else.”