Machining Solutions

March 19, 2009

Ingo Federle, vice president of technical operations; Peter Buczynsky, president; and Ben Brower, vice president of sales and service; are the management team at Micron Pharma Works.

Micron Pharma Works is expanding the markets for its pharmaceutical container-making machines.

An engineer in a pin-drop quiet office turns a tube-shaped, multi-colored image on his screen to see it from different viewpoints.

A machinist on the spotless and quiet production floor next door checks a gleaming new 20-foot steel machine, with stainless steel, see-through plastic covers and rollers.

In a dark storeroom next door are dozens of similar, yet older machines, still bolted to wooden platforms, waiting for rehab work.

And in another room, off the production floor, another employee checks the size of containers on screen that will house medicine for pets as another machine behind him flashes a light into different packages, taking photos.

This is a glimpse inside the inner workings of Micron Pharma Works, an Odessa company in south central Pasco County that makes and rehabs large metal machines that make blister-pack foil and plastic containers for pharmaceuticals that go around the world.

The past year has been significant for the seven-year-old company because, despite intense foreign competition, its business has been growing.

Starting with pharmaceutical container machines, Pharma Works is now making machines that can produce packages for pet medicine and medical devices, such as syringes.

And in an economy marked by layoffs, Pharma Works is hiring, on the lookout for control engineers and accountants.

“We really need people who come out of this field,” says Peter Buczynsky, 42, president of Micron Pharma Works.

Starting in Germany
Buczynsky, a trim engineering graduate from Georgia Tech with a shaved head who speaks Ukrainian, moved to Germany after college and dabbled in entrepreneur ventures before Pharma Works. He exported cars and clothing to
Europe and Asia. While in Germany, he met his wife.

He started a company called Micron Automation which made specialty machine controls from 1996 to 2001.

Buczynsky started Pharma Works in 2002 in Tampa with his two business partners, Ben Brower and Ingo Federle. They had worked in similar industries and saw each other a lot. Federle is from Germany.

“We’re a great team,” Buczynsky says. “Ingo is the brains behind the machines. Ben is great in sales.”

In mid-2005, because it was running out of space and needed space to grow, Buczynsky moved Pharma Works to an office park in Odessa, off State Road 54 on Success Drive.

About a third of its work is reconditioning machines.

Clients, mainly from the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, come in and test the new equipment, sometimes spending a week in the plant running test batches.

Privately held Pharma Works would not reveal revenues, but Buczynsky says they have been consistently increasing every year and that the company is reinvesting profit to grow the business.

“None of us are getting rich,” he says.

Looking ahead
Pharma Works competes with many large foreign firms, so it needs to be responsive, but keep its costs down. As a result, it outsources some of its machinery work. So Buczynsky and his partners have talked about the possibility of an acquisition to give it more machining capacity.

“We all wear different hats,” he says. “We could do so much more if we could specialize.”

But Pharma Works mainly is guided by another influence.

“We try to apply sound Biblical principals to the business,” Buczynsky says. “We don’t spend money if we don’t have it. Part of our success is treating people how you would like to be treated. This business is built on that.”

He adds: “What you apply to your own life, you should apply to business.”

The company is also working with school board members in Pasco County to promote and encourage middle and high school students to consider technical and engineering education and training. It is helping set up engineering academies for students to give them a taste of engineering or technical careers and gives tours of its facility to students.

Buczynsky’s vision is to keep Pharma Works in the pharmaceutical and health care industries.

“We’re not going to get into the food industry,” he says. “We’re going to stay focused on the blister packs.”

Pharma Works needs to constantly keep up with changing industry standards so it can serve customers.

For example, Europe allows consumers to push pills directly through blister packs to get access, while in the United States, the government wants the packs to be child-proof, so machines need to be set differently to make blister packs that are more reinforced.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business: Micron Pharma Works
Industry: Pharmaceutical packaging
Key: Being more responsive and efficient and offering a better product than overseas competitors.

President’s
office

Peter Buczynsky may be the president of a growing international company, but his modest office has the size and flavor of many you might find among middle managers at Gulf Coast companies.

About 12-by-12, just off the lobby, it features a desk; a small bookcase; a stuffed doll of Buzz, the Georgia Tech mascot; a small corkboard with product pictures and spreadsheet numbers; and a small dry eraser board. Rolls of pharmaceutical blister packs are on the floor, on his desk and on the window ledge behind him.

His laptop and a couple of photos of his children sit on his desk.

On the dry eraser board, above some doodles by his children, is a quote from 2 Chronicles 7:14: “If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.”