PROUD TO BE FROM SOUTHERN OREGON

 Met One Instruments

“When we moved our business here it was the ready, willing, and able workforce that was key for us and gave us an edge.” -Peter Pomponi, VP Sales
Photo Credit: Jim Craven Photography

GRANTS PASS, OR – Met One Instruments (MOI) moved to Grants Pass, Oregon, in 1980 from the Silicon Valley, and it has been riding a rapid growth curve ever since. “It just stopped making monetary sense to be there,” said Peter Pomponi, Vice President of Sales. According to their CFO Riley Loftin, “The business environment in California is very difficult on manufacturing companies. It’s one of the main reasons why people move out of California to go find something else – they get frustrated with it all.”
“It’s easy for us to do business here,” said Peter. “It’s easy for us to get our products shipped and it’s easy for us to get components locally if we can’t make them ourselves. We now have 110 employees in Grants Pass. We like to hire local people, and the workforce here is ready, willing and able.” Peter also noted that there are great business organizations in Southern Oregon. “Organizations like SOREDI and Business Oregon support any size of business.
During the last 30 years, while the United States was outsourcing manufacturing, MOI did the opposite and expanded its operations in Grants Pass. “Insourcing” is our edge,” Peter explained. “Cost reduction is always important, but customer response is even more important! The focus on insource manufacturing gives us the ability to respond as quickly as the market requires. We do all of our engineering and manufacturing under one roof in Grants Pass. This gives us complete control over our products so we can maintain the highest quality standards and on-time deliveries to our customers.”
MOI is one of the oldest manufacturers of scientific instruments for meteorology and particulate monitoring in the United States. With an engineering department staffed by 15 engineers, they are constantly introducing new products and enhancing existing products to meet the growing demand for environmental monitoring equipment.
Leading edge instrumentation, data logging, environmental software and monitoring systems are sold in more than 100 countries worldwide from MOI’s Southern Oregon headquarters. “We’ve worked a lot with Business Oregon, which helped match our company to potential customers overseas. We’ve taken advantage of their willingness to go out there and hand our product information out to key business people in markets that we wouldn’t normally travel or have access.”
MOI projects include entire meteorological monitoring networks for countries throughout the world. “The world is a big place and we’ve been very fortunate to sell to customers around the globe,” says Riley. “In fact, we are the largest exporter in Oregon in our size business class. Our location is convenient to reach most markets. It’s certainly convenient to the key markets we operate in including Asia / Pacific, Europe, and the Americas.”
MOI projects have included entire meteorological monitoring networks for countries from Asia to the Middle East, as well as the major part of pollution and emissions monitoring within the US and internationally. Private industry, research institutions, universities, military and home defense organizations, as well as all levels of government environmental agencies are among its satisfied customers.
Met One Instruments, Inc.
1600 Washington Blvd.
Grants Pass, OR 97526
www.metone.com
(541) 471-7111