Winbco Tank

The Company was founded in 1939 as Winger Manufacturing Company with expertise in fabricating special alloy steels. Initially, the primary products were used in the construction industry and meat packing industries, given its location in Southeast Iowa. Over the past 5 years, the Company has been the largest tank system supplier to the ethanol industry with market share exceeding 80% of the plants with capacity of 60MGY or more. By the 1960s, the Company evolved to address a newly emerging industry, grain processing. John Travlos joined the Company in 1960 after graduating from NYU with a double major Aeronautics and Aerospace Engineering. With his knowledge of the particular properties of special alloys for which the Company specialized, he illustrated the benefits of stainless steel tank systems to participants in the distilling industry whom, at the time, used wooden tanks. Grain Processors, Inc. was the first converter customer and, over the late 1960s, Travlos refocused the Company to designing and fabricating systems for the grain processors. From the early 1970s on, the Company developed strong customer relationships with the grain processors (ie, ADM, Cargill, Staley Corn Products and Grain Processing) and worked closely with them to develop new stainless systems for many different processes. The Company has established itself as a "customer" company in which it works closely alongside its customers to design the tank systems the customers need to develop and deploy new products. As such, the Company's tank systems have been used for a wide range of end-use applications including alcohol distilling, ethanol, high fructose corn syrup, artificial sweetener, chemicals, air-pollution control scrubbers, water purification, etc. Over the past 5 years, the Company has been the largest tank system supplier to the ethanol industry with market share exceeding 88% of the plants with capacity of 60MGY or more. Over eight billion gallons of ethanol are produced annually through the systems provided by WINBCO. The Company's tank processing systems are used in an increasingly wide range of industries. Currently, WINBCO is working with companies supplying biofuels, solar, starch, sugar, juice and water purification.