On a walk around most any city, you’ll discover dozens of gray “boxes” that are fast becoming an ordinary part of the landscape. You can see these “boxes” attached to utility poles, along sidewalks, and near businesses and schools. Such “boxes” are really enclosures that protect wiring and electrical components vital to our ever-increasing automated world. Keep walking further out of town and you’ll still see these “boxes” dotting the countryside. Even in the most remote places, enclosures are needed to safeguard important equipment that keeps people connected and systems running.
If you walk around Mentor, Ohio, (near Cleveland on Lake Erie) you will find a company dedicated to designing and producing these “boxes.” Integra Enclosures manufactures engineered thermoplastic electrical enclosures that resist corrosion, water, heat, cold, and most anything that even the harshest conditions can present. Integra’s use of polycarbonate provides an ideal material for various types of NEMA (National Electrical Manufactures Association standards) enclosures. Integra enclosures are designed to be used for electrical construction, water treatment, solar power, telecommunications, instrumentation, utilities, machine building, HVAC, and more.
An Integral Part of the Mentor, Ohio Community.
Integra Enclosures is America’s largest manufacturer of polycarbonate enclosures. Founded in 2000, Integra Enclosures operates out of its shared 50,000 square-foot manufacturing facility in Mentor, Ohio. Most all of the enclosures Integra produces are built to order. As a result, they stock not only finished product but all components on site that they use to build to order so customers are provided with timely customization of their enclosures. The customization work is also performed in-house at the Mentor, Ohio location. In addition to manufacturing, the Integra engineering team, inside sales, accounting, marketing, and all other office employees work out of the company’s headquarters.
MUM Industries is the parent company of Integra and employs slightly more than 100 employees at the Mentor, Ohio headquarters. In 2010, MUM acquired All-Flo Pump Co. and in 2016, it acquired Strongbox. All companies share manufacturing facilities in Mentor, Ohio and Escondido, CA. Integra’s current President, Jim McWilliams joined Integra in 2006 and was promoted to President of MUM Industries in 2007. From 2006 to 2016, MUM’s sales increased tenfold making it one of the fastest growing companies in the area.
As one of the leading employers in Mentor, Ohio, Integra Enclosures has been recognized as a successful local business by the Fast Track 50 organization. In fact, Integra has won the Fast Track 50 Award for eight years running beginning in 2008. The Lake-Geauga Fast Track 50 Award honors companies and individuals in Lake and Geauga, Ohio counties that have shown growth and change to contribute to business success. Specifically, the Lake-Geauga Fast Track 50 is an annual program that honors the fastest growing companies in these Ohio counties based on a weighted average of 80 percent sales growth and 20 percent employment growth over the previous five-year period.
An Integral Part of Our World.
As there continues to be an increased demand for enclosures, Integra is leading the way with its customized products. From the local car wash and building sites to huge telecommunications and utility locations, single or multiple enclosures are used to protect electrical components. These components provide communications on and off the site, keep machinery running smoothly, and monitor automated processes. Integra’s enclosures can be customized to support nearly any application – from indoors to a remote location at a high altitude or submersed in water.
Integra’s enclosures use polycarbonate rather than fiberglass or steel because it’s lightweight but tough, UV resistant, and easy to work with for customization. In a side-by-side product comparison, Integra notes the benefits of polycarbonate as durable, recyclable, UV resistant, easy to modify, lightweight, reasonably priced, and has less damage when shipped. All these benefits demonstrate why enclosures like Integra’s are becoming more common both around town in simple uses to across the globe in complex applications.
An Integral Part of the Enclosure Industry.
One of the newest applications for enclosures is in remote monitoring. Often, remote monitoring is used for facilities or data collection sites in sparsely populated or hard-to-reach areas. Enclosures are required to hold remote monitoring systems and can be placed virtually anywhere. The flexibility of quality enclosures helps to reduce time and money associated with installation, maintenance, and data collection. In the field, the polycarbonate material that Integra uses to produce its enclosures is beneficial for technicians to easily drill and adapt the enclosure on the spot to accommodate wires and mounting panels with no splintering, harmful dust or skin irritation.
As the industry expands and more enclosures are required to hold remote monitoring systems for organizations around the globe, Integra is keeping up with this demand by producing a NEMA enclosure that can be placed in just about any location. Integra Enclosures President Jim McWilliams explains: “Integra manufactures an affordable enclosure that will protect customers’ remote monitoring equipment, as well as transmit signals to the collection center. To keep up with the rugged demands of protecting remote systems, we’re always looking for new and innovative ways to offer our customers with products that have high-impact strength, are resistant to the elements, provide watertight protection, are easy to modify in the field, and offer lightweight and rust-proof materials. That’s why we’ll continue to produce a polycarbonate enclosure instead of fiberglass. Polycarbonate enclosures can withstand over 900 pounds of impact, which is more than four times the impact resistance of fiberglass enclosures.”
Staying ahead of industry trends is vital to Integra. The organization wants to be ahead of the curve in providing what customers want … or what they will need in the future. “As technology improves the demand for live-time remote monitoring of everything from a pump in a field to electrical consumption to renewable energies continues to grow. With each change and development, Integra is looking forward to supporting any initiative focused on streamlining the remote monitoring processes,” said McWilliams.
In the near future, Integra plans to continue its organic and geographic growth and product line expansion. McWilliams continued: “Enclosures are really much more than just “boxes” these days. The capabilities, advantages and structure designs embodied in an Integra enclosure offer clients reliability, ease of use, functionality and, most importantly, customization. Each enclosure that we create serves a specific industry or application, and each is different. We honor our customers’ uniqueness and work with them to address any customization needs required for their application and work environment. Today, our enclosures are helping companies protect their equipment around the world but with all the technological advancements, who knows what our enclosures will protect in the future or where. But whatever or wherever it is, we’ll be ready.”
