In jeans and a cowboy hat, John Simmons looks like a Kamas native, a well-sewn patch in the fabric of rural Utah. But his business, White Knight Fluid Handling, Inc., is not the stock image of what fits in a small town. Simmons, the president and CEO of White Knight, built a manufacturing business complete with sterilized labs and dozens of machines with labels written in Japanese in the heart of Kamas.
The business specializes in zero metal, ultra-high purity fluid handling equipment. In other words, very high-functioning, very expensive pumps. The products are used around the world by high-tech manufacturers in semiconductor, solar and LED industries. For instance, when a company in China needs to manufacture a standard microchip with no metal contaminant the contamination could short circuit the chip it’s buying what White Knight is selling, meaning that Simmons is often traveling to Europe and Asia for work.
“My business life is very involved, very fast paced,” Simmons said. “I don’t like my personal life to be like that. I live in Kamas because I can, because I want to be here.”
White Knight, in its rural setting, caught the attention of the Utah Chamber of Commerce, and is the only business in Utah to receive five awards for the organization’s 2012 Best of State Awards.
The Summit County manufacturer won five awards in three categories from the Utah Chamber of Commerce. The competition includes 10 overall categories, from Hospitality, Travel and Tourism to Education to Sports and Recreation, and 20 or more sub-category winners. White Knight won three awards in Production and Manufacturing, including Chemicals and Related Products, Machinery, Rubber and Plastic Products and one award in Science and Technology for Inventor. In its first year applying for a Community Development award, White Knight won the Private Sector Economic Development Award.
“People ask, ‘What is your management doing?’ ‘What’s your company doing?'” Simmons said. “Those are all the wrong questions. You don’t succeed on this level without having a highly dedicated group of people who are doing what they love to do.
“We all have bad days and frustrating days, but for the most part people love coming to work here. They love their job. They love what they’re doing, and they love succeeding. Success breeds success.”
The awards don’t stop there. This year, the business won the Utah Psychologically Healthy Workplace Award presented by the Utah Psychological Association. Last year, the company won four awards and the Best of the Best Award, the winning Production and Manufacturing business in 2011.
Over the span of the company’s history, White Knight has won both the Dupont Plunkett awards for innovation in Teflon design and an Editor’s Choice Award from Semiconductor International, two companies that look internationally in its awards selection.
The factory floors bustle with 50 or more employees on any given day, Simmons integrated into each part. He knows all the names. He slips easily into conversations on deionizing water and proper Celsius temperatures. With an eagle-eye attention for detail, Simmons continually works kinks out of the business, whether it’s tracking orders or tweaking the manufacturing line process.
Being a successful manufacturer in the United States, Simmons said he never once considered taking the business overseas.
“We don’t take any sales away from the community,” Simmons said. ” All of the products we produce go out of the county. White Knight is exporting, the manufacturing, the engineering, the sales, everything. We’re exporting our talents and bringing money back into the area.”