Cool Work Done in Algonquin

Author(s): CHRIS FREEMAN - cfreeman@nwherald.com
Date: April 5, 2011
Section: Business

ALGONQUIN – David Baldwin began working on the cooling systems for Magnetic Resonance Imaging machines more than a decade ago in Huntley. All the while, he had one eye on his biggest competitor. And when it came time for Baldwin to make a career change, he got in touch with that competitor, Cool Pair Plus.

The two parties meshed, and Baldwin opened the Herminie, Pa.-based company's second office Jan. 1 in Algonquin.

"My partner, James Balet, is the president of the company, and he's a great guy," said Baldwin, the vice president at Cool Pair Plus. " I've known him for five years, and he's somebody – even being a competitor in this industry – we always got along real well. I liked his business ethics and thought he had a standup company.”

Cool Pair was founded in 1996 and handles parts and service repair for cryogenic equipment. Baldwin said that 60 percent of the business was involved in the medical field, and mainly focused on MRI machines.

The other 40 percent handles equipment used in research and development, he said. That includes pharmaceutical companies or universities that operate spectrometers and NMRs, as well as government and aerospace companies that operate items such as electron microscopes and defense systems.

"There's only maybe four or five other people that do what we do," Baldwin said.

Baldwin described the service in automotive terms. A company such as General Motors might have a warranty that covers service on the car, he said, but third parties operated gas stations to make sure the car would run.

Cool Pair, he said, is like a gas station. It handles work on its own, as well as having equipment manufacturers contract the company to do the service on its machines.

The 15,000-square-foot facility on Corporate Parkway in Algonquin required four months of buildout. Baldwin said it was important for the company to be near Interstate 90 for easy access to O'Hare International Airport.

"We wanted to be close to [I-]90 to move parts back and forth to the airport," he said. " We can get parts anywhere in the world out of O'Hare – that's tough sometimes in Pittsburgh – but it's a great airport to work out of, and we get an extra hour of shipping in Central time [compared with Pennsylvania].

"It made business sense for the pricing we worked out, and my commute is 15 minutes.”

The Algonquin office handles Cool Pair accounts in the Midwest and West, while the Pennsylvania headquarters handles East Coast accounts. Eight people work out of the Algonquin office, although the company has about 60 engineers that it works with to handle on-site service and repair.

"The stuff we work on, the cooling systems for MRIs, the temperatures we achieve are about 4 Kelvin," or more than 450 degrees below zero, Baldwin said. " It's the most cutting-edge tech out there, and our guys have to have mechanical engineering or electrical backgrounds.”

When Baldwin began working in Huntley, he vied with Cool Pair for the title of top company in the industry. Now, he said, the goals are clear.

"We plan on being the No. 1 gas station again in our field," he said.

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