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NoCO Manufacturing Partnership Announces New Major Sponsors for NOCOM 2018 Trade Show

Posted by Brad Shannon on April 6, 2018 at 9:30pm

Xcel Energy and The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade

are new supporters for NOCOM 2018

 

Loveland, Colorado— Northern Colorado Manufacturing Partnership (NoCO) has announced two major new sponsors for its NOCOM 2018 manufacturing trade show April 12, 2018: The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade (OEDIT) and Xcel Energy.

 

These two organizations join a team of sponsors that include FirstBank, Aerotek, Flood and Peterson, and EKS&H. These sponsors all add to the manufacturing sector in Colorado and contribute to the development of the industry.

 

OEDIT is sponsored by the state to provide opportunities to businesses and enterprises in Colorado. The office, under the leadership of Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, provides financial and technical assistance supporting local and regional economic development projects throughout the state.

 

“The quickly expanding advanced manufacturing industry in Northern Colorado plays an important role in the state’s economic landscape,” said Katie Woslager, senior manager of Advanced Industries at the Colorado Office of Economic Development. “We are proud to sponsor the 2018 NOMCOM to facilitate further growth and collaboration in the industry.”

 

Xcel Energy provides power to residents across Colorado and beyond, while providing resources required by the manufacturing industry. Xcel Energy is tied in with the manufacturing sector in Colorado, providing products and services to many firms in the state.

 

“Given the growth Colorado is experiencing, our partnership with Xcel Energy is imperative,” said NOCOM 2018 Chair and H2 Manufacturing Solutions CEO Heidi Hostetter. “Colorado is one of the fastest growing states in the nation. Northern Colorado, specifically Larimer and Weld counties, is growing twice as fast as the state. It is important that we address our options sooner than later, and this type of growth has to include our energy partner. Local manufacturers are well aware of the need to be more involved with our local and state side Xcel Energy teams. Together we need to take advantage of Xcel Energy’s packages, rebates and programs.”

 

“The Governor’s arm for economic development is a key and critical partner to NOCOM and really reflects the commitment from a state level to our manufacturing community,” said Christine Juker of the Northern Colorado Manufacturing Partnership. “Partnering with Xcel Energy addresses a huge and critical infrastructure need that all manufacturers face.”

 

The event showcases Northern Colorado’s expanding manufacturing sector, connecting suppliers, manufacturers, capital, and services. Registration is now open at this link. Admission is $15 for pre-registered attendees (students are free) and $20 at the door, with post-event B2B networking event (sponsored by H2 Manufacturing Solutions and Manufacturer’s Edge) included, and $30 for the kickoff breakfast featuring keynote speaker Jim Davidson, sponsored by BMA America. Other sponsors include Speaker Hall sponsor Northern Colorado Economic Alliance; Venue sponsor City of Loveland; and Coffee sponsor Noffsinger Manufacturing.

 

About the 4th Annual NOCOM Trade Show

NOCOM 2018 takes place Thursday, April 12th, 2018, The Ranch Events Complex, Loveland, CO. For more information or to register, visit www.nocomfg.com. Attendees can download the Yapp App from Yapp.us, Google play or Apple’s app store and enter the ID code NOCOM2018 for detailed information on the event. A PDF flyer for the event is available at this link. Exhibitor booth space is still available, $390 for a 10x10 booth and $540 for a 10x20 booth. Contact NOCOM for details.

 

Date:     Thursday, April 12th, 2018

Time:    7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

                Kick-off Breakfast at 7:00 a.m. at the Budweiser Events Center (separate ticket required)

                Sponsored by BMA America

                B2B Networking Reception 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.

                Sponsored by H2 Manufacturing Solutions and Manufacturer’s Edge

 

This year’s NOCOM Trade Show features more than 100 exhibitors, a speaker hall featuring several manufacturing industry leaders, manufacturing forums, and a B2B reception. Topics discussed will include: Get the best bang for the buck with healthcare; Navigate programs and grants targeted to grow Colorado manufacturing businesses; Learn insiders' secrets on the latest and greatest technology advances should be part of your strategy for this year . . . and beyond; and Navigate challenges that manufacturers face.

 

This year’s NOCOM Trade Show will feature over 100 exhibitors, a speaker hall featuring several manufacturing industry leaders, manufacturing forums, and a B2B reception. The event will showcase Northern Colorado’s expanding manufacturing sector, connecting suppliers, manufacturers, capital, and services.

 

“NOCOM continues to be the largest trade show in the state because we design it around manufacturing and supply chain demands, needs and forecasts. We continue to strive to ensure that each gets better, stronger and more valuable to our manufacturing community,” says Heidi Hostetter, NOCOM Chair.

 

For more information and to register for this event, visit www.nocomfg.com. For more information on sponsorships and to become a corporate sponsor, contact Heidi Hostetter, NOCOM 2018 Chair, at 303-517-6541or hhostetter@faustson.com.

 

About Xcel Energy

Xcel Energy is the primary provider of energy services to residents of Colorado state-wide. It also works with the manufacturing industry, partnering with firms and businesses across the state. Millions of businesses and homes in eight Western and Midwestern states are powered by Xcel Energy, which is increasingly becoming more customer-focused, forward-thinking, and productive. Like their Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter or LinkedIn for up-to-date news and information.

 

About Colorado OEDIT

OEDIT’s goals include building a robust public-private approach on a statewide level for economic development, monitoring economic conditions in Colorado and strengthening regional economic structures, increasing quality job creation, and more. In the manufacturing sector, the average annual wage for Colorado workers is 43% higher than the average annual wage for all industries, in part because of OEDIT’s support of the manufacturing industry in Colorado. In all, there are 5,900 manufacturing firms receiving support of some kind from OEDIT. Keep up with everything OEDIT does on  Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

 

About Northern Colorado Manufacturing Partnership

The NoCo Manufacturing Partnership was formed in 2013 as a result of Governor Hickenlooper’s state Economic Development plan called the Colorado Blue Print. The Blue Print identified 11 key sectors of the economy in Colorado by region. Northern Colorado’s two main sectors identified were Health and Wellness and Advanced Manufacturing. Regions within the state were encouraged to form sector partnerships to provide more localized grass roots support to augment state efforts in each sector. These would be industry specific, led by business, in partnership with economic development, education and workforce development. A collaboration arose as part of the Blue Print process involving people from each of these affiliations and the NoCo Manufacturing Partnership was born. It continues to be an all-volunteer, business led, FREE membership organization designed to support Northern Colorado manufacturers. It is served by a Board of Directors, representing each affiliation from private business to local government, as well as two active committees: Networking and Manufacturing Talent/Rocks! Find us on the web, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

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U.S. Department of Defense Office of Economic Adjustment Funds Mountain West Advanced Manufacturers Network

Posted by Brad Shannon on May 10, 2017 at 10:56pm

Test case integrates R&D, OEMs, contractors and subs to efficiently employ AM processes, expand markets and increase resiliency

 

Golden, CO –ADAPT, the Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies, a research consortium focused on developing technologies to accelerate the certification and qualification of 3D printed metal parts, in cooperation with the University of Utah, has received funding from the U.S. Department of Defense for the first phase of the Mountain West Advanced Manufacturer’s Network (MWAMN). From the approximately $2.7 million in funding, roughly $1.5 million will go to Colorado School of Mines and ADAPT.

 

“This program creates a new manufacturing platform to advance economic and workforce resilience in response to changes in defense spending,” said ADAPT Technical Director Aaron Stebner. “Enabling manufacturers to efficiently deploy additive manufacturing processes helps diversify their product offerings, expand into non-defense markets, and provide resilient employment and value to their communities and the economy independent of defense spending.”

 

The MWAMN leverages ADAPT’s existing data infrastructure built with funding from a State of Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade Advanced Industries Accelerator grant and funds from founding member companies. This data infrastructure will help inform product and material change-overs; create new innovations and diversification; accelerate product development; and reduce reliance on the defense industry while improving the ability respond to new Department of Defense requirements.

 

Other network members include Citrine Informatics; Carnegie Mellon’s NextManufacturing Center; and the NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership organizations from Colorado and Utah, Manufacturer’s Edge and the MEP Center at The University of Utah.

 

“Additive manufacturing holds the promise of enabling manufacturers to quickly adapt to changing market needs compared to traditional manufacturing methods,” noted Heidi Hostetter, ADAPT industry board chair. “Today, building new parts or switching materials with this technology takes too long. MWAMN is focused on radically shortening that time, lowering costs, and reducing the negative economic impact on companies and communities when defense programs and spending changes.”

 

Together, members will network past, present, and future defense-supported metals manufacturers directly with advanced manufacturing research and development centers via a centralized, artificially intelligent database. This platform will enable defense manufacturing contractors to efficiently use AM processes to shorten product development cycles, expand product mix, enter new non-defense markets, increasing economic diversification of their businesses along with economic and workforce resilience.

 

About ADAPT

The Alliance for the Development of Additive Processing Technologies (ADAPT) is a research and development organization dedicated to the creation of next-generation data informatics and advanced characterization technologies for additive manufacturing technologies. ADAPT uses these tools to help industry and government qualify, standardize, assess, and optimize advanced manufacturing processes and parts. Several levels of membership to the ADAPT consortium are available. Founding industry members include Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., Faustson Tool, Lockheed Martin, Citrine Informatics. Grant funding from the Colorado Office of Economic Development & International Trade (OEDIT) was provided to Manufacturer’s Edge and The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Hollings Manufacturing Extension Partnership. For more information, find ADAPT on the web, LinkedIn,Facebook, or Twitter.

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Consumer’s Interest High at Community Banks

Posted by Erik Keith on December 22, 2008 at 2:30pm
It took $4 gasoline to get folks to think about their driving habits. Similarly, it looks like a meltdown of the megabanks and other financial institutions is prompting consumers to think about where they are putting their money, who they can trust and what results they should expect. And much of their hard earned cash is flowing into deposits at community banks:• According to the FDIC, banks with less than $10 billion in assets, community banks, have seen an increase in deposit growth this year from a minus 0.77% in Q1 to a positive 2.06% in Q3. Larger banks witnessed a 3.81% decline in growth of deposits for the same period.• The Federal Reserve reported that October deposits and lending at community banks outpaced the overall industry. Between October 1 and October 22, community banks saw deposits rise 1.1 percent, or nearly $27 billion, to more than $2.4 trillion. For the same period, the nation’s 30 largest U.S. chartered banks saw $44 billion, or 1.2 percent of deposits, walk out the door, leaving them with less than $3.8 trillion.• REWARDChecking, a free checking account offered by more than 450 community financial institutions across the country, reported a 96% jump in deposits in the third quarter of this year.“Through products like REWARDChecking, community financial institutions are winning back customers from the faltering megabanks and investment houses,” said Don Shafer, Chairman of BancVue, a leading provider of products and consulting to community banking institutions. “Americans are indicating that they enjoy investing their money locally, and they benefit from high yields, fiscal safety and customer service.”Higher yields on short term deposits like those found on CheckingFinder.com are certainly fueling interest in community banks. Month-to-month applications on CheckingFinder.com (https://www.checkingfinder.com/), a website that connects consumers with community financial institutions offering high-yield checking accounts, jumped 14% from July to August, 46% from August to September, and 53% from September to October. A small sampling of applicants on the site indicated nearly seven out of 10 were moving their funds to community financial institutions from large banks.Examples of the yields found at community banks compared to those higher yielding shorter term deposits at megabanks (as of December 15) includes:COMMUNITY BANKS YIELDS PRODUCTSCommunity Bank of Pleasant Hill, MO; 6.10%; High-yield CheckingFirst Robinson Bank, IL; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingLegence Bank, IL; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingCommunity Bank of Raymore, MO; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingThree Rivers FCU, IN; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingFlorida Central Credit Union, FL; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingUnion State Bank/Bank of Atchison, KS; 6.01%; High-yield CheckingBank of Granite, NC; 6.00%; High-yield CheckingMEGABANKSWAMU; 5.00%; CD (5 years)eLoan; 4.75%; CD (6 years)Schwab; 3.60%; CD (18 months)ING; 3.75%; CD (1 year)HSBC; 3.50%; CD (1 year)Countrywide (BofA); 3.10%; CD (9 months)eTRADE; 2.25%; CD (12 month)“Three years ago the issue of 'how secure is my money?' was literally not on the consumer’s radar; today, the future viability of the nation’s largest banks is,” continued Shafer. “Not so with community banking, a system that has endeared trust by its roots and not by its branches.”
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Analysis Shows Megabanks Have 23,000 Times More Exposure to Credit Default Swaps than Community Banks

Posted by Erik Keith on March 25, 2009 at 3:57pm
Healthy Community Banks Unfairly Impacted and Consumers Should Heed Wake-Up CallAs the economic crisis puts a spotlight on the obscure world of credit default swaps (CDS), an unregulated $62 trillion market that most people never heard of and even fewer understood, the fear of a CDS catastrophe is haunting the country’s largest banks, and the nation’s healthy community institutions and consumers are paying the price.An analysis of FDIC data as of 12/2008 conducted by BancVue (www.bancvue.com), a leading provider of products and consulting to community banking institutions, shows that commercial banks $10 billion or larger have just over $24 worth of credit derivatives for each dollar of equity. By comparison, the rest of the industry has essentially one-tenth of a penny of CDS for each dollar of equity. Those numbers translate to the big banks having roughly 23,000 times as much credit derivative exposure versus all other community financial institutions.This comes at a time when megabanks are already reeling from write-downs on mortgage-related securities. "These are the same institutions that themselves have either directly or through subsidiaries invested in the subprime market," said Don Shafer, Chairman of BancVue. “After suffering losses all over the place, the megabanks are now waiting for the next shoe to drop. In the meantime, it’s placing an undue burden on healthy small banks and should serve as a wake-up call to consumers.”Since the mortgage-backed securities that many swaps were supporting began to lose value in 2007, investors have feared that the swaps, originally meant as a hedge against risk, could suddenly become huge liabilities. While the CDS marketplace is completely unregulated and the swaps trade without a central clearinghouse, it’s known that commercial banks are among the most active participants. According to the Comptroller of the Currency, JP Morgan Chase, Citibank, Bank of America, and Wachovia were ranked the top four most active players.In February, federal regulators facing a cascade of bank failures depleting the deposit insurance fund raised the fees paid by U.S. financial institutions. Although the FDIC intended on charging more from higher risk banks, they also suggested levying a hefty emergency premium in a bid to collect $27 billion this year. The higher premiums being assessed were originally set for 20 cents for every $100 of insured deposits levied equally on the 8,305 federally insured institutions. To put that in perspective, for a $250 million dollar community bank, the “one time tax” would constitute a $500,000 hit, which could wipe out 20% to 40% of a bank’s annual profits. At the Independent Community Banking Association Convention last week, FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair predicted that the assessment will probably be lower. She went on to say that the FDIC is seeking comments on whether the agency should use total assets or some other base for the special assessment, which would have consequences for how the burden is distributed.“How about basing part of the assessment on the amount of credit derivatives a bank holds compared to their equity?” continues Shafer, referencing BancVue’s research showing the extraordinary exposure to CDSs of the megabanks versus the community financial institutions. “If you are going to unfairly burden smaller banks that played by the rules, the least the FDIC can do is base the levy on the banks that helped trigger the crisis.”Even amidst this threat and turmoil among the megabanks, consumers are still trusting more than 70% of deposits in the U.S. to these large financial institutions. “Americans appear to be paralyzed in their banking relationship leaving so much of their hard earned cash in TARP and CDS-laden megabanks. It’s time for consumers to wake up and evaluate their banking options, particularly when community banks offer a less risky deposit alternative with better products and services,” concludes Shafer.
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Consumers to Get Dave Ramsey Financial Advice With High Yield Checking

Posted by Erik Keith on March 20, 2009 at 2:23pm
With the economy and investment opportunities slimming, consumers are looking for alternative, safe avenues for storing their money other than their mattress. CheckingFinder.com, home to the highest yielding free checking accounts at community banks and credit unions across the nation, has announced a limited time offer of a trial membership to Dave Ramsey's MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com for every person who submits an application.In addition to the advice and tools from Dave Ramsey, a personal money management expert and best-selling author, consumers will find checking accounts yielding up to 5.15% APY and be able to open them within minutes on CheckingFinder.com."Dave Ramsey is renowned for offering life-changing financial advice on his nationally syndicated radio talk show and in his books, and we're proud to be able to offer his MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com, especially during these tough economic times," said Gabe Krajicek, Chief Executive Officer of BancVue, the company responsible for providing high-yield REWARDChecking® to community financial institutions and aggregating them with the help of marketing partner, FIRST ROI on CheckingFinder.com.CheckingFinder.com is an online search engine that helps consumers find free, high-interest checking accounts with no minimum balance from community financial institutions across the country. Consumers have the peace of mind knowing that all these accounts are insured through the FDIC, NCUA, or ASI. The advertised rates are not introductory teaser rates, there are no monthly fees or minimum balance requirements associated with the accounts, and ATM fees are refunded nationwide.Dave Ramsey's MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com is a subscription site helping people discover financial peace by walking them through Ramsey's 'baby step process' for dumping debt and building wealth. MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com is widely considered to be one of the best tools available to keep people motivated and accountable for their finances."Dave Ramsey has been a solid supporter of what we're doing at CheckingFinder™ and with the REWARDChecking accounts," said John Waupsh, Chief Executive Officer of FIRST ROI. "He truly understands what it means for money to work harder."For more information on these free, high-yield checking accounts at community financial institutions and the free trial offer to Dave Ramsey's MyTotalMoneyMakeover.com, visit http://www.checkingfinder.com.
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Personal Financial Stimulus Package

Posted by Erik Keith on March 12, 2009 at 10:47am
As Personal Savings Rise to 5%, Consumers Could be Making Up to 6% APRAccording to the U.S. Commerce Department on Wednesday, the personal savings rate surged to 5% in January. As consumers frantically try to save their money as the economic outlook continues to look bleak throughout much of the country, they could be making up to 6% APR on their checking account.A “personal financial stimulus package” starts with the basics—your banking relationship. Community banks are still offering the best interest rates on free checking accounts:Florida Central Credit Union 6.01First Robinson Savings Bank 6.01Communications Federal Credit Union 5.25Connexus Credit Union 5.15Community Bank of Pleasant Hill 5.01Three Rivers FCU 5.01Union State Bank/Bank of Atchison 5.01Beacon Federal Credit Union 4.51In over 4000 community financial institution branches across the country, consumers are receiving from 3% to 6% interest rates on free checking with no minimum balance and reimbursed ATM fees. And these are NOT teaser rates.With a history of delivering value and customer-centric service, selected community banks and credit unions are offering free checking accounts with CD-like yields. The bank or credit union realizes operational savings when account holders accept eStatements, utilize direct deposit, access online banking, and increase their debit card usage and returns it to the consumer in the form of higher yields.To help consumers find community banks and credit unions with high-yield checking accounts, www.checkingfinder.com was created.
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