STOCK EQUIPMENT, a world leader in the design and building of bulk material flow-control equipment for the power and energy industry, was founded by Arthur J. Stock on 1 Oct. 1929. Stock, a mechanical engineer, secured patents for a distributor for use in stoker-fired boilers and he formed Stock Equipment to provide products for stoker-fired coal applications. Interestingly, Stock invented a variety of products including staplers, hollow rubber balls, and an improved nipple for baby bottles. Most of his efforts, however, were largely for use by the power generation industry.
Until the late 1960s, the company's major specialty was feeding, measuring, and controlling the flow of coal from the coal bunker to pulverizers or stokers. As demand for electricity increased in the 1950s and 1960s and concern about pollution grew, the firm developed a gravimetric feeder to permit accurate control of combustion in the boiler and minimize stack emissions. The gravimetric feeder was first installed at the Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation's Dunkirk station in 1957. These developments soon set the standard for the power industry for many years.
In 1967 Stock began developing radioactive waste-disposal equipment for use in North American nuclear-power plants. By 1986 the company produced solid radwaste systems, dry waste compactors, and remotely operated materials-handling equipment, offering its radioactive and nonradioactive waste systems to a world market. The company's headquarters and main manufacturing plant were in CHAGRIN FALLS with additional facilities in Lynn Haven, Florida, Funabashi, Japan, and Johannesburg, South Africa.
Since 1980 Stock Equipment has been a unit of General Signal. As a member of General Signal, Stock Equipment has seen both highs and lows. After a peak year in 1981, the company lost $33 million in subsequent years. Under the leadership of chairman Edmund M. Carpenter, however, the company boasted 1993 earnings of $66.6 million.
In 2003, Stock Equipment was acquired by Portland, Oregon-based Riverlake Partners LLC. Annual revenues at the time of the sale were $50 million. In 2004, Stock Equipment was headquartered at 16490 Chillicothe Rd. in Chagrin Falls and the company employed just under 200 workers.