National Pump Co. Champions Pump Technology for Over Four Decades.
For nearly 45 years, National Pump Co. has made pump technology the centerpiece of its business. Founded in 1969, the company works to help its clients achieve their goals and objectives all the way from research and development to design, production and testing.
“The most important part of what we do is the customer service that we provide,” President Allen Hobratschk says. “We take care of customers as well as we can.”
Vast Capabilities
Since 2010, National Pump has been a part of the Gorman-Rupp Co. portfolio. Since 1933, Gorman-Rupp has designed, manufactured and sold pumps and pump systems for use in water, wastewater, construction, industrial, petroleum and original equipment applications. Other uses include agriculture, fire protection, heating, ventilation and air-conditioning, military and other liquid-handling applications.
“They looked at us because they were mainly wastewater treatment, submersible-type pumps, which is a different entity than us,” according to Hobratschk. “They were looking to round out their capabilities.”
As for National Pump, it also serves a variety of verticals. The company operates in the municipal, industrial, residential water system, power, commercial HVAC, agricultural and API/oil and gas markets. Headquartered in Arizona, National Pump has branches that are strategically located throughout the United States in California, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi and Texas. This footprint allows the company to serve the United States and Canada.
“We’ve hired the right people to get us into many markets,” Hobratschk says. “The agriculture market has been our forte, but we are very well adapted to pursue those other markets.”
In addition to serving many markets, National Pump offers an array of products and services. The company offers vertical line shaft turbine deep well pumps, close coupled pumps and API 610 vertical pumps. Its offerings also include submersible turbines, package systems and submersibles/jets/centrifugals, as well as service and repair, testing and an engineering catalog.
In fact, National Pump’s full range of vertical turbine and submersible pumps – whether water or oil lubricated, or of threaded or flanged construction – have capacities up to 20,000 GPM and pressures up to 2,000 PSI. The company’s pump models are available in stock but can be customized at the service center level. In addition, National Pump can manufacture custom pumps with special alloys and coatings based on client needs.
Whether the pumps are working in commercial, industrial, municipal, power, residential, mining, oil and gas or agriculture, each National Pump system is an individual system created for a specific pumping job. National Pump has the scale needed to serve any client, but it is still small enough to provide flexibility and individual attention. National Pump prides itself on its ability to employ state-of-the-art technologies and equipment. This helps its products meet the highest possible efficiency and reliability standards.
“We’ve increased our engineering and sales staff,” Hobratschk says. “We can get highly engineered product shipped in 18 to 20 weeks, and that drives a lot of business our way.”
Opportunities Ahead
Looking forward, National Pump believes the API and oil and gas industry should be a strong area of opportunity for the next 10 to 15 years. The company has added a number of product lines focused on API and municipal markets, such as a 30-inch product line that allows its pumps to move up to 20,000 gallons per minute.
“Oil and gas is a volatile market with booms and busts, but we think in the near future it will be a pretty solid business,” Hobratschk says. “Ultimately, what we try to do is weather storms like we had in 2007 and 2008 and be able to adapt.”
At the end of the day, the most important investment area for National Pump is people. The company has added machine capacity and is active in a number of industry organizations and associations, but National Pump would not be where it is today without its intellectual capital.
Others have recognized the quality of its employees. In fact, the Hydraulic Institute announced at the 2013 HI Annual Meeting that National Pump’s director of engineering, Bruce Ticknor III, had earned the 2012 Young Engineer of the Year Award.
With a customer-oriented culture, National Pump believes it will continue to be successful in all of the markets it serves. “Our culture and strategic plan provides us with good growth potential,” Hobratschk says. “We will keep chipping away and gaining marketshare.”