Made in Colorado Awards 2023: Most Innovative Manufacturer

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

MOST INNOVATIVE MANUFACTURER

WINNER — Orbit Fab

Lafayette, Colorado

Website: www.orbitfab.com

With a tagline of “Gas Stations in Space,” Orbit Fab is manufacturing the infrastructure to refuel spacecraft and eliminate the industry’s single-use model.

Orbit Fab’s flagship product is RAFTI (an acronym for Rapidly Attachable Fluid Transfer Interface), which Chief Commercial Officer Adam Harris describes as “a refueling valve” for spacecraft that might otherwise meet a fiery demise deorbiting and reentering the atmosphere.

Now with about 50 employees, the company aligns with organizations looking to clean up space debris and make the industry more sustainable. “You want to be able to reuse that vehicle that’s in orbit,” Harris says. “Old satellites are still useful and still broadcasting, so they want to move them somewhere.”

The first RAFTI on a spacecraft launched in 2020 and transferred water to the International Space Station. Orbit Fab has since delivered a number of units to customers and developed the next generation of the product. “We’re in the midst of delivering those RAFTIs that will get launched over the next year or two,” Harris says, citing an expectation of the first refueling operation in space in 2025. In the longer term, Orbit Fab could support lunar missions by delivering fuel as well as water and other commodities via RAFTI.

The company handles the final assembly of RAFTI and other hardware in-house, but relies on a network of local contract manufacturers for machining, plating and other processes. Orbit Fab is also building the fluid systems for its fuel tankers in-house, while relying on local satellite manufacturers to build the vehicles themselves.

Launched in Silicon Valley, the company relocated to Colorado in 2021 due to the state’s formidable aerospace footprint. “We were looking at L.A., we were looking in Texas and Florida, places like that,” Harris says. “We found there’s a lot of capability in Colorado and that’s one of the reasons we wanted to move here.”

Nicknamed Tycho Station, the company’s 60,000-square-foot facility in Lafayette is an incubator of sorts. “It’s on our four-year plan to grow into that whole space, but right now, we have seven other companies that are subleasing that are space companies,” Harris says.

FINALIST — RK Mission Critical

Aurora, Colorado

Website — www.rkmissioncritical.com

A subsidiary of RK Industries, RK Mission Critical (RKMC) is making waves in vertical hydroponic farming with Sedalia-based FarmBox Foods, manufacturing stackable, 320-foot farms designed with hyper-efficiency in mind. The partnership aligns with the RKMC’s existing business manufacturing critical infrastructure for data centers, energy storage and other applications.

FINALIST — Alquist 3D

Greeley, Colorado

Website — www.alquist3d.com

The company behind the world’s first 3D-printed concrete house in 2021 relocated from Iowa to Colorado in fall 2023. Founded in 2020 by Zachary Mannheimer, Alquist 3D is now manufacturing infrastructure and proprietary concrete mix at its facility in Greeley and expects to create more than 75 jobs in the city in the next five years.

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].