Vac-U-Max has reached a proud milestone celebrating 65 years of business providing bulk material handling and industrial vacuum cleaning solutions to industries worldwide.

The company has grown from the dreams of its founder Frank Pendleton, who designed the world’s first industrial vacuum cleaner that operated only on compressed air to service the highly combustible textile mills industry of New Jersey. In addition to servicing niches for combustible dust handling, in 1970 Vac-U-Max designed and engineered compressed air-powered industrial vacuum cleaners for the evacuation of highly flammable jet fuel for Pan American Airways, recovering jet fuel from the wing tanks of the first Boeing 747 aircraft.

Since 1954, Vac-U-Max has designed, manufactured, and marketed a full range of compressed air-driven industrial vacuum cleaners for combustible dusts, flammable liquids, and reactive powders, with product range expanding to include explosion-proof electric-powered vacs used in agriculture, chemical, and food industries, as well as portable, continuous-duty, and central vacuum cleaning systems. In 2018, Vac-U-Max designed the first renewable-energy lithium-ion vacuum cleaning system for high-volume recovery of post-consumer waste for municipal transit track cleaning applications.

A pioneer with many firsts, Vac-U-Max entered the pneumatic conveying business in 1965 by designing the first venturi-powered vacuum generator with patented noise suppression for applications conveying black powder for a U.S. ordnance manufacturer. In 1977, Vac-U-Max introduced the vertical wall “tube hopper” material receiver designed for difficult-to-convey materials. Today’s manufacturing environment utilizes pneumatic conveying systems for moving a wide variety of powders and granular materials from sources like drums, totes, and super sacks, to destinations like process equipment or packaging lines, with vacuum conveying technology the most commercially accepted. In 1989, Vac-U-Max patented the bulk bag (Super Sac) unloading station that included massaging actuators that aid material flow from the Super Sac to the process below.

Vac-U-Max’s tradition, vertical integration, application expertise, and manufacturing in Belleville, NJ spans three generations, with Steve Pendleton the president. “It gives me great pride to follow our family tradition and entrepreneurial spirit,” said Pendleton. “We are committed to building, expanding, and continuing our legacy by manufacturing high-quality solutions for industries worldwide. I am proud of what our company and employees have accomplished and will continue to accomplish, following the legacy of our founder, Frank Pendleton.”

Since 1954, Vac-U-Max has defined leadership in bulk material handling and industrial vacuum cleaning for a wide range of industries including food, pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, chemical, frac sand, precast concrete, packaging, additive manufacturing, plastics, nonwovens, and more. A UL-listed designer and manufacturer of control systems for general purpose and hazardous locations, Vac-U-Max furnishes integrated controls maximizing coordination of material movement with tie-in capabilities to existing control systems. With a customer-centric focus at every step of the process, Vac-U-Max is committed to continual improvement with quality policies, strategies and quality systems communicated within the organization.

“The secret to the success of any business is being able to focus not on fighting to keep the old, but also on building and expanding the new,” said Doan Pendleton, vice president. “At Vac-U-Max, we focus on our customers and their applications and in doing so incorporate 65 years of process expertise.”

With over 6000 sq ft of available floor space in the customer test facility, Vac-U-Max offers the ability to create a multitude of equipment configurations. More than 10,000 difficult-to-convey materials have been tested in 65 years, adding to Vac-U-Max application expertise in bulk material handling and industrial vacuum cleaning. The test facility is equipped to meet customer demands for full-scale vacuum conveying, flexible screw, and aero-mechanical conveying testing, in addition to testing a wide range of industrial vacuum cleaners.

The Vac-U-Max product range includes vacuum conveying components and systems for general purpose and USDA Sanitary designs, multi-ingredient handling/batch weighing systems, bulk bag loading/unloading systems, bag dump stations with integrated dust collection and empty bag compaction, flexible and aero-mechanical screw conveyors, convey line diverter valves, direct charge blender loading, load lifters, mobile vacuum conveying systems, feeder refill systems, filter assemblies and media including HEPA filtration, UL-listed control panels, as well as a full line of portable, continuous-duty and central vacuum cleaning systems for high-volume recovery of many materials including combustible dusts, flammable liquids, steel shot, reactive powders, and more. For more information, visit www.vac-u-max.com.

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