MEMBER PROFILE - Rockford Seperators

FOLLOWING NATURE’S LAW OF GRAVITY:

Rockford Separators

By Paul Anthony Arco

Ever wonder what happens to that oil that goes down the drain at an auto repair shop or the solid food waste at a fast-food restaurant? That’s where Rockford Separators comes in.

Rockford Separators manufactures separators and trench drains for the plumbing wastewater industry and new commercial construction.

The company was started by a local ownership group under the name Rockford Sanitary Systems in the late 1960s and was located on Railroad Avenue. Rockford Separators has been at its current location on 28th Ave., since 1976.

“The company started as a job shop that made whatever anyone needed — they could fix or weld anything,” said President Rob Williams. “They started manufacturing the separators for a company in Chicago that went broke in the early ’70s and ownership decided at that time — since we were already manufacturing everything — to go ahead and market them under our own name.”

The original ownership group sold the company to the Mott Brothers in the mid-1980s and, following Merritt Mott’s death, current owners Jeff Beto, Tom Graceffa, Andrew Hranka and Josh Yelsey acquired Rockford Separators in 2019. The company has since expanded its national footprint and is actively working to partner with other regional and local manufacturing businesses.

“Our advantage is that we’re able to focus on one product — that allows us to be more efficient than our competition,” said Williams, who joined the company 40 years ago as a welder and moved up the ranks, becoming president three years ago. “The customer can call us and talk to one person, and we can get started within hours on their custom unit or project. We have a quicker reaction time than a larger company, where separators are just one segment of their total product line, which allows us to be more competitive.”

Custom-Built Solutions

Separators are used to separate a variety of wastes: grease, oil, fuel, lint, food solids, chemicals, solid waste, sand and gravel.

It’s all about gravity separation, according to Williams.

“What sets our separators apart is that our designs follow nature’s law of gravity in separating lighter-than-water waste matter from heavier-than-water waste, and both are retained in the separator,” he said. “The water continues through into the sewer system and our separators trap the greases, food or sand and gravel before it enters the sewage system and mixes with other waste.”

The separators are custom built and come in more than 600 different sizes, ranging from 1½ gallons to 50,000 gallons for job-site specific applications and installed wherever separation systems are needed, including industrial plants, office buildings, restaurants, food-processing plants, laundromats, hospitals and retail outlets.

Rockford Separators can produce and ship smaller separators in three to five days; 2,000-gallon separators can take up to two weeks to build and deliver. The company produces an average of 4,000 separators each year.

The restaurant industry is the company’s biggest segment of business — they manufacture grease separators for hospital and school cafeterias, as well as local and chain restaurants. “The bulk of our sales is sold to plumbing wholesale supply companies across the country and locally to companies like Columbia Pipe, Connor Company and Ferguson Enterprises,” Williams said. “We also work with engineers and contractors on specs for projects.”

The company has just under 20 employees, including engineers, machine operators, welders, painters, clerical, shipping and receiving and accounts payable. They also have 25 independent manufacturing reps working to market their product across the country. Williams said the average tenure of local employees is 10 to 12 years. “Everyone here knows their job,” he said. “You can give them a set of drawings and know it will be done right the first time.”

The COVID pandemic impacted Rockford Separators’ business when restaurants were closed and were not building new or didn’t need to replace their existing grease interceptors. Business, Williams said, is slowly returning to normal and should improve when new construction begins in the spring. “Everyone here is antsy to get busy again. In the meantime, we just keep looking for new opportunities.”

ROCKFORD SEPARATORS

President: Rob Williams 5159 28th Ave. 815-229-5077 Rkfdseparators.com