Sending products to consumers may seem like a simple task, but are the packages arriving intact after traveling across the country or overseas? Memphis-based FedEx TechConnect built a new, state-of-the-art facility that simulates any travel conditions a package may encounter to provide its clients with the best packaging solutions.

“You can move something with FedEx from the desert or dry areas of the West Coast to the more humid, hot areas of the Southeast and up north to the areas that are cooler, and all those conditions have an impact on the box, tape and labels,” President and CEO of FedEx TechConnect Cary Pappas says. “The new facility is not only a testing and design center, it’s a customer education center. We make sure our customers have all the tools they can utilize with FedEx to provide proper packaging.” 

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DKD Electric recognizes the need to lessen the impact that construction, inefficient power consumption and waste have on the environment. To increase its sustainability efforts, the company has kept a strong focus on becoming a leader in the design, integration and construction of photovoltaic (PV) systems in the southwest.  

The Albuquerque, N.M.- based company was founded as a two-man operation in 1978. DKD Electric merged with Integrated Electrical Services in June 1999 for the next five years to provide additional strengths and resources to its customers. Former owner J. Dee Dennis Jr., purchased the company back with a partnership group in January 2005. In 2011, J. Dee Dennis Jr. left the company and J. Dee Dennis III assumed the position of CEO and continues to uphold the company’s vision to provide valuable services to clients. 

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Larry Silvi Sr. started out in 1947 with a small sand and gravel plant located behind his farmhouse. Within a few years, he was supplying the concrete for foundation slabs at a new housing development by Bill Levitt, called Levittown, now Philadelphia’s largest suburb. Business was brisk, with all the veterans back from World War II settling down to raise baby-boomer kids.

Today, his sons Larry Jr. and John Silvi run a large, regional, vertically integrated material supply company with divisions in mining, concrete, cement and real estate. Their Pennsylvania-based Silvi Group Companies owns more than 1,000 acres of land used for stone quarries, one of the largest sea terminals on the East Coast and the world’s largest cement blending and processing domes. Those domes have a capacity of 130,000 tons and can offload a ship at a rate of 525 tons an hour.

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The Saint Paul Port Authority was created more than 80 years ago to stimulate business development along the Mississippi River and the authority continues its mission today by taking it inland and redeveloping industrial spaces in ruin.  

In the 1920s, the United States Congress approved the dredging of a nine-foot channel in the Mississippi River between Saint Paul, Minn., and New Orleans, creating the lock and dam system. “This made the Mississippi River reliably navigable when the locks and dams were built,” President Louis Jambois says. “The port authority was created in 1932 and today we have more than 30 businesses, over 1,000 jobs and we move about 5 million tons of commodities in and out of the Saint Paul Port each year.” 

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After three decades, Power Dynamics LLC stands as an equipment manufacturer whose talents are nearly unrivaled, Vice President of Operations Carl Liberty says. “There’s very few companies out there that can actually manufacture what we produce,” he declares.

Headquartered at the Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Power Dynamics manufactures a wide range of equipment, including hydraulic power units, PLC control systems, hydraulic winches, hydraulic systems, custom hydraulic cylinders, pipe-handling equipment, pipeline tension machines, and horizontal directional drilling units and associated equipment. Owner Bob Hancock founded the company in 1984 as a hydraulics and pneumatics distributor.

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Merit General Contractors Inc. has built a diverse portfolio of projects over the past two decades that has enabled it to remain stable during drastic changes in the market. “Business opportunities depend on the market, but overall, we saw a slight uptick last year and it appears that the trend will continue for the next three to five years,” CEO Don Crabtree says. 

Crabtree received his degree in construction science from Kansas State University and founded the Olathe, Kan.- based company in 1991 after acquiring years of experience in estimating, marketing and customer development with a larger local general contractor. Merit’s services include design/build and construction management. 

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MCM Management Corp. prides itself on applying traditional demolition skills with cutting-edge technologies at the highest level of safety and productivity. 

CEO David Mardigian founded the Bloomfield, Mich.- based company in 1993 with nearly 30 years of experience in demolition under his belt. Mardigian focuses on achieving low unit costs through productivity, maintaining the highest level of safety and meeting tight schedules, while minimizing the impact of demolition operations on adjacent property owners and the public. “The MCM mission is to establish standards of performance, safety and integrity that are not expected by the most experienced buyer of our services,” the company says.

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Kentucky’s largest utility providers are working to make sure their facilities meet and exceed new federal emissions guidelines. Louisville Gas and Electric (LG&E) Co. and Kentucky Utilities (KU) Co. are overseeing more than $3 billion worth of planned or ongoing upgrades to several of its power plants. 

The company’s projects include replacing 800 megawatts of coal-fired power generation that will be retired at three of its stations before 2016 to meet stricter EPA regulations governing mercury and air toxin standards and the national ambient air quality standards for sulfur dioxide. 

“We asked ourselves what the best economic choice was for ourselves and our consumers, and decided that for these three stations, it was more cost-effective to build new facilities than to upgrade existing ones,” explains John Voyles, vice president of transmission and generation services for the Louisville-based natural gas and electric energy utility.

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