Manufacturing for Alaska: Keeping North Slope workers warm and dog mushers on track.

• Author: Friedman, Sam
• Position: Building Alaska

The majority of Fairbanks manufacturers know they can't beat their Lower 48 competitors when it comes to price. With high energy costs, a long supply chain, and a small labor pool, Alaska's Interior can be a brutal place to be in the manufacturing business.

Alaska in general has never been a manufacturing powerhouse. Manufacturing jobs represent about 4 percent of the state's job market, and almost all of these jobs are in the seafood processing industry, according to state labor statistics.

But there's something about extreme cold temperatures that make people care strongly about the quality of their equipment and a bit less picky about cost. To put it simply: quality is valued over cost when warmth, comfort, and safety come into play. All three of the following Fairbanks manufacturers have found markets in the Lower 48 and internationally because their products are especially well suited for the cold.

Equipment Source

There are almost 1,000 little yellow ES700 portable heaters scattered around North Slope oil fields. These Fairbanks-built machines are about the size of a closet and capable of pumping out 700,000 BTUs of heat, enough to keep multiple buildings warm in the Arctic winter. The heaters have become Equipment Source's flagship product because they're designed for and by people who live in the cold, says branch manager Nick Ferree.

Walking up to an F.S700 in the front lot of company headquarters in the south Fairbanks industrial area, Ferree points out some of the features that make it popular on the North Slope. The controls are big, so that even someone with heavy mittens can operate them. The engine doesn't have to be shut down as often for oil changes because a special oil pan added by Equipment Source to the stock motor allows it to run continuously for as long as four months between oil changes.

Business founder Terry Warnath started Equipment Source in 2000 as a repair service for oilfield heaters. But the business soon moved from repairing to building units.

"There are competitors that make similar heaters. We would take them, gut them, rebuild them, put new generators in them, fix the fireboxes, and do new wiring," says Ferree. "We learned a lot from that and started making our own heaters."

The business expanded into other portable units that house motors including generators, pumps, and ground-thawing equipment. The business is also a retailer for Kubota, the Japanese tractor company whose motors Equipment Source uses inside its units.

Inside the Fairbanks fabrication facility, right next to the showroom, a worker aided by a computer uses a plasma...