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Pipeline Safety Monitoring Company Eupec RMS Reviews Direction

Posted on: Friday, 4 November 2005, 12:00 CST

By Jeff Tucker, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

Nov. 4--Startup pipeline safety monitor Eupec RMS may cut more staff but does not plan to close, the company president says.

Tom Kirkpatrick, president of Eupec RMS, said Tuesday the small firm was "in the process of re-establishing a viable direction" and that the company planned to release more information in coming days. Kirkpatrick characterized the move by the company as a downsizing.

The company employed 21 people as of early summer.

The company was brought to Pueblo in 2002 from Dayton, Ohio, aided by a $660,000 grant from the city's half-cent sales tax for economic development. The company came to town promising as many as 75 high-tech jobs but staffing has never reached more than 50.

A month ago, Pueblo Economic Development Corp. members toured the business to see how the plant makes high-tech telecommunications systems for monitoring the structural integrity of gas and oil pipelines.

Jim Spaccamonti, PEDCo president, said this week that all he knew about the situation was that the company was pursuing a new direction and that its parent company, based in Germany, was up for sale.

"There's probably a lot of posturing going on right now," Spaccamonti said. "They are sorting out a lot of their divisions and Pueblo is one they are sorting."

Kirkpatrick, a former longtime executive with Xcel Energy in Pueblo and also a former chair of PEDCo, was brought in after the company's original president. Allen Hanano, left in 2003.

A subsidiary of German-based Eupec PipeCoating, the company, the former TransWave International, relocated from Dayton, Ohio, and intensified efforts to carve a niche in the pipeline monitoring field.

The company makes small electronic monitors that allow companies to keep tabs on the condition and quality of their pipelines from the comfort and convenience of the home office, or anywhere else fed by the Internet.

The units decode an electronic signal sent the length of a pipeline section.

Eupec RMS goes a step further by featuring a variable signal, or waveform, that allows companies to isolate trouble spots and distinguish between types of problems, ranging from the start of corrosion to a major line breach.

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Pueblo Chieftain, Colo.

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XEL,

Source: The Pueblo Chieftain

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