Power to the people! As our nation grows, so too do our electricity needs; the sourcing of energy continues to be one of the most durable challenges facing Americans today. Increasingly, powering America means moving energy from renewable power sources, like wind and solar, to city centers, data centers, and—of course—electric equipment. We must make sure this energy gets to work on time, which means we need a tremendous increase in transmission capacity.
The AEM Manufacturing Express got a glimpse of how small-town America is changing the world. The transmission lines that power the future of our electric economy aren’t coming from Silicon Valley—but the Minnesota River Valley. Mankato, Minnesota, is home to corn, soybeans, and a gem of a company called Condux/Tesmec.
In Mankato, they’re developing technologies, building American-made equipment, and partnering with international companies. That’s how Condux/Tesmec has become a leader in the production and distribution of line-stringing equipment: a safer, more efficient solution to grow the nation’s electric grid. Company executives, state officials, and Condux/Tesmec employees joined the Manufacturing Express to talk about the importance of equipment manufacturing and celebrate Condux/Tesmec’s new distribution facility in Mankato.
It’s a family-owned company with over a hundred years of history, right here in Mankato. How? By supplying the mechanized solutions that the United States has depended on to build this country, year after year, generation after generation. That’s the story of Mankato: equipment manufacturers providing good jobs to Minnesotans and great products to Americans all over.
You’d need a pretty long strand of cable to follow the company’s history back to a saddlery and harness shop in 1883. But Brad Radichel, the owner of Condux/Tesmec, says it was a logical move from the family’s development of concrete drain tiles and underground piping to the machines needed to run cable through those pipes. Beginning in the 1960’s, the company’s focus increasingly turned toward stringing electric cables and developing machines to make that an easier and safer job.
Today, Condux/Tesmec and about 100 employees in Mankato are providing some of the best solutions for this segment of the utility industry. Their equipment adds to the nation’s grid while also upgrading existing capacity, including machines that cut up old transmission lines for recycling as new lines are strung.
What’s the biggest challenge for this growing company in Mankato? Brad Radichel says it might be politics, “It takes as much as fifteen years to get a transmission line approved. That’s not fast enough to build the grid we need.”
One thing’s for sure: the equipment that will make tomorrow’s electric grid possible is already being built by the folks at Condux/Tesmec—right here in central Minnesota.
