Ikonics unveils Morgan Park expansion

A Duluth company is quickly becoming iconic in the commercial airline industry, and now it has the high-end digs to show off to its high-level customers.

Ikonics Corp. officially unveiled its $4.3 million expansion in Morgan Park on Thursday afternoon.

"I think we reached the turning point for where we stand in the industry," Ikonics CEO Bill Ulland said. "Now people call us - we don't have to solicit (business)." The 27,300-square foot facility is dedicated to the company's aviation division, which employs 12 people today and possibly more in the future.

"We've got a lot of extra space, and we wouldn't have done that without anticipating growth," said Ulland.

The expansion is connected to an existing 37,000-square-foot plant at the Atlas Industrial Park, the former home of Atlas Cement Co.

Altogether, Ikonics employs 80 people and last year had net sales of $17.5 million.

The expanded facility is used for the company's sound-deadening technology for airline and helicopter engines.

"No one is doing it like us," senior composite technician Don Wold said during a public tour of the facility.

The work done there doesn't involve building parts, but taking customers' parts - such as the rounded housing for airplane engines - and punching holes in it. That's the simple way to describe it, but of course it's more complex than that. Ikonics applies its film - a type of product the company has been manufacturing since it was founded as Chroma-Glo in 1952 - and several steps later sand-blasts a carbon fiber or fiberglass component so that it is perforated.

Ulland said his bigger customers include Airbus, Mitsubishi and Bell Helicopter.

Cirrus, a leading plane manufacturer also based in Duluth, doesn't use Ikonics parts since its planes have already gone through Federal Aviation Administration approval, a yearslong process. But a new model might be able to make use of Ikonics' innovative technology down the road.

NASA has shown an interest in the company's tech - and those kinds of contracts are no chump change.

Any increase in business could increase employment at the plant, and that's what many Ikonics workers and others gathered to celebrate Thursday afternoon.

"It is so satisfying to see this kind of success happening," said Duluth Mayor Emily Larson during the ribbon-cutting.

1/2: Matt Becka, robotic applicatons manager at Ikonics, explains the operation of a 6-axis robotic sand blaster to a group of visitors at the company's ribbon-cutting Thursday afternoon. Bob King / rking@duluthnews.com

2/2: An acoustical liner for a jet engine features thousands of perforations created with a proprietary process at Ikonics. Bob King / rking@duluthnews.com