Inside the bustling manufacturing world of Magnetron
Colombia’s coffee-growing region may not be where you’d expect to find a company supplying renewable energy equipment to the world, but that’s just what family-owned Magnetron does, providing transformers to German, Spanish, and U.S. solar titans and even electric car makers.
Business is so brisk that Magnetron plans to hire 150 more employees this year, boosting staff to 820 and the number of countries it supplies to almost three dozen. “We’re adding a third shift at the factory to meet demand,” says Magnetron’s second-generation CEO, Alejandro Navarro.
Started a half century ago as a repair shop for electric motors, Magnetron now makes custom, built-to-order transformers that energy companies use to distribute and store electricity. Its products run in solar-energy parks in the U.S. and beyond.
The company’s pivot to renewable energy was born out of adversity. In the 2000s, Magnetron relied on oil-producing Venezuela as its top customer, but by 2015, after the global financial crisis and Venezuela’s political turmoil, that market collapsed. The company was forced to trim staff and consider new options. The worldwide shift to energy from the sun, wind, and batteries looked promising.
With manufacturing costs lower than most build-to-order producers in the U.S. and Europe and quicker delivery times than many larger rivals, Magnetron broadened its focus. Today, renewable-energy accounts for about one-third of its sales, mainly in the Americas. The rest of its transformers go to conventional electricity producers, some in the Middle East.
“In Miami, we have a local distributor that has sold our transformers in Puerto Rico, among other markets,” says Navarro, 56, who often travels to meet customers and welcomes them in Pereira.
The story of Magnetron spans from popular candies to a respected Colombian president, from U.S. manufacturing giant Westinghouse to Japan’s just-in-time production used by Toyota. It all began when Alejandro’s dad, Marcial, was working at a factory for longtime candymaker Colombina (which now has its U.S. headquarters in Miami). Marcial, an electro-mechanical engineer, sometimes brought motors for repair to a local machine shop. When that shop’s owner looked to retire in the 1960s, he asked Marcial to take over his business.
Back then, the Coffee Federation was starting a project to bring electricity to rural areas. A manager in the Federation suggested Marcial make the transformers needed to switch the voltage of electricity from poles to homes.
Marcial and his team reverse-engineered a transformer from a different producer through a process of trial and error – “the first attempt gave off pyrotechnics,” his son admits – and came up with a safe, quality product that met international standards. Sales took off with rural electrification.
“When I fly over the coffee-growing region, it’s very emotional for me, because those are our transformers that I see that have changed the lives of so many families,” says Alejandro Navarro.
Working at the company was a young economist from Pereira named Cesar Gaviria. He became city mayor, Colombia’s president (1990-94), and later, chief of the Organization of American States in Washington, DC.
In the 1970s, Magnetron partnered with Westinghouse, which provided capital and technology and became majority owner. In the 1980s, Europe’s ABB bought out Westinghouse’s transformer business. Marcial parted ways and went out on his own.
By then, his engineer son Alejandro had joined the venture. With Japan as the world’s manufacturing beacon in the 1980s, Alejandro earned a fellowship to study in Kyushu, learning such concepts as just-in-time production and continuous improvement. He took those lessons back to the Pereira factory.
Nowadays, Magnetron is investing some $4 million to expand production. It trains painters and others using virtual-reality glasses that measure dexterity and range of movement. It shares profits with employees, paying 70-day salary bonuses last year. And Alejandro’s son, Juan Jose, has joined too.
Says Navarro, as employees pack equipment for export: “We transform energy into growth for our company and for the coffee-growing region.”
