With the era’s accent on the reduction of operating costs, Catalyst Connection, the industrial resource center for southwestern PA, hopes to recruit more small to mid-sized manufacturers to pool their demand for power into group contracts with greater clout to bid for electricity in competitive markets.
The first purchases under a pooled contract evolved from a series of workshops the center organized in December. It yielded energy supply discounts of 13 percent for the 13 manufacturers who participated. “One of those companies is enjoying a rate that will save them $17,000 in electrical costs,” Pam Grove, Catalyst Connection’s director of new business, says.
In that first round, some 40 companies weighed the options for the pooled purchasing. Grove hopes that the second round of workshops will attract even more manufacturers to savings that, in their own right, can constitute a small stimulus grant. The opportunities will be presented again at a workshop held today at the Holiday Inn at RIDC in Harmarville, as well as at two others on April 28 at the Ambridge Regional Center and April 30 at the Marriott Hotel in Cranberry.
“In today’s economy you have to look for cost-savings wherever you can, no matter your size,” Grove says. “Some of the companies say they’re too small to recover any significant costs from energy. We try to show them that every dollar you can save is important.”
Source: Catalyst Connection, Pam Grove
Writer: Joseph Plummer
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