Made in Colorado Awards 2023: Manufacturer With a Mission

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

MANUFACTURER WITH A MISSION

WINNER — Delta Brick & Climate Company

Montrose, Colorado

Website: www.deltabrick.com

Chris Caskey founded Delta Brick & Climate Company in 2018 with methane capture in mind.

In researching uses for methane from abandoned coal mines in Colorado’s North Fork Valley Caskey discovered another raw material that was abundant in the area: sediment behind the dam at Paonia Reservoir that was ideal for making brick and tile.

Delta Brick & Climate started to manufacture tile from the sediment in Montrose in 2020 and launched a brand, Particular Tile, in 2022. “It’s grown really well. September was our largest revenue month to date,” Caskey says. “Our product line is growing and we’re really getting confident in our manufacturing, which is nice.”

Delta Brick & Climate is also making progress toward the goal of capturing methane to power the operation. As of October 2023, the company was under contract to buy the old Bowie No. 1 coal mine near Paonia.

Aircraft-based sensing has shown that about 87 kilograms of methane escape from the mine every hour. “That’s a big, no smoking situation,” Caskey says. “We’re confident that there’s a lot of gas to be captured and a lot of pollution to be mitigated.”

And there’s enough methane to sustain the tile-making operation many times over. “Step one is to capture the gas and burn it to keep it out of the atmosphere,” says Caskey. “Step two is to move the factory up there.”

The longer-term vision? “We’d like to be capturing and destroying gas from at least five mine sites and using enough mud out of the reservoir that irrigators actually notice that they have more water storage — and making a bunch of beautiful products.”

FINALIST — Spinster Sisters Co.

Golden, Colorado

Website — www.spinstersistersco.com

Founder and CEO Kelly Perkins started Spinster Sisters in 2012 to make soap and skincare without the toxic ingredients that are all too common in the mass market. A little more than a decade later, the “microsoapery” sells online and through more than 2,000 retailers while setting an example for the industry with natural ingredients, sustainable packaging and business transparency.

FINALIST — Danconias Truffle Brownies

Boulder, Colorado

Website — www.danconias.com

The manufacturer of Danconias Truffle Brownies, Community Table Kitchen is a social enterprise of Bridge House, a nonprofit that helps adults experiencing homelessness. Trainees live in affordable housing for a year while working in baking, packaging and shipping for the brownie company. All proceeds go back into programs to support the mission, and the program has a success rate of 75 percent.

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].