Success Stories

Our FloridaMakes Supplier Development team is here to help you find what you need to strengthen your supply chain. Don’t just take it from us! Here are some of the many success stories we’ve had in helping Florida manufacturers grow their business and build a more resilient supply chain.

Grace Aerospace (St. Augustine, FL)

Leveraging the Connex Florida platform and the support of the First Coast Manufacturers Association, the FloridaMakes Network helped Grace Aerospace, a small aerospace manufacturer in northeast Florida identify, connect with, and successfully obtain subcontract awards from a major prime defense customer in their region (Fleet Readiness Center Southeast in Jacksonville, FL), substantially expanding and diversifying their business in the process.

Airon Corporation (Melbourne, FL)

Leveraging the Connex Florida platform and support of the Manufacturer’s Association of the Space Coast, the FloridaMakes Network helped Airon Corporation, a niche Florida-based ventilator manufacturer source critical components locally and ramp up production in spring 2020. Shortly after the initial engagement to help them ramp up for a significant order from California and New York, Airon was connected with Ford Motor Company and GE Healthcare via a White House task force to help meet a critical national need for ventilator production. As one of three small ventilator production companies in the U.S. with a scalable/modular design, Airon undertook a rapid production ramp-up, from approximately 30-50 units per month prior to the pandemic to one unit per minute in April-June 2020, in part through Ford converting a portion of one of its F-150 factories in Michigan to ventilator production. Airon and its consortium partners produced 50,000 units in 100 days, delivering a full order of ventilator units to the United States’ Strategic National Stockpile by mid-August 2020