Equipment design company has roots in Moses Lake

Creation a family affair at Flodin, Inc.

MOSES LAKE — For nearly two decades, Flodin, Inc. has been changing the shape of vegetable processing from within the Columbia Basin.

Overlooking Interstate 90 from its location at 13752 North Frontage Road, the company manufactures a wide range of food processing equipment.

"We're primarily based on potatoes, we get onions and we get frozen products," said Flodin Chief Executive Officer John Flodin.

The company got started in 1954 in Sunnyside. Flodin worked as an engineer with his father, who worked as both a salesman and the president, and his brother, Al, who worked as salesman. For the first 10 years, the company doubled its sales and started building french fry plants as a result of that rapid growth, he said.

There was a short term where the company was out of business, after selling it to a national conglomerate based in Houston, Texas, until it was wiped out about four years later.

Flodin and his family started all over in 1984, with a manufacturing company in Sunnyside. They moved to Moses Lake two years later, because most of the potato processing equipment is in the Basin and down towards Pasco. The central location allows the company to reach more processing plants, Flodin said.

In addition to Flodin, his son works as a vice president and his brother Bill, also the owner of WLF Design, LLC, works at the company as well.

The company has built the entire facility for seven potato processing plants and six dehydration plants, two of which are located overseas, in Romania and Poland, he said.

"We have a number of processing plants that we work with right here," he said, mentioning National Frozen Foods, Simplot and others.

The number of employees working at Flodin varies, although there are 16 at present. Quotes are already going out for next year, Flodin said.

Flodin said that the last year has been better because of improved conditions in the market. The company builds mostly capital equipment, which major companies are slower to purchase in low economies.

Flodin, Inc. builds, among other things, the equipment for frozen juice concentrate systems and a breaking system for frozen products.

"Peas, corn and chicken pieces will stick together," Flodin explained. "They store that in a four by four bin. When they come out of that, a lot of pieces stick together. So we made a breaking system for that."

Ocean Spray is a major consumer for the frozen concentrate system, he said, while Campbell Soup is for the breaking system.

Flodin, Inc. also has a high-pressure water cutting system that uses a combination of water and very fine granite, he said, and a unit "that is the only one in the world that works" at removing floating debris and rocks from potato cutting systems.

"It's all over the world," he said. "I've been building rock removal systems for a long time for the fresh industry. I knew the problem existed in the french fry plants, to a large extent. I woke up in the middle of the night with this thing on my mind. I do a lot of that in my sleep, evidently, but when I get up I have to write it down or I'll forget it in the morning."

The one presently sitting in the middle of the Flodin, Inc. plant is Number 82, he said, adding that 83 percent of the equipment is made out of stainless steel. Flodin has 19 patents and is working on more, including a product that will both peel and wash potatoes.

Flodin, 77, was succinct as to the reasons he is still hard at work and what he enjoys about the job.

"There's a lot of designing," he said.