October 4, 2019
By Dan Miner – Reporter, Buffalo Business First
Joseph Abramo, left, has owned Buffalo Wire Works since 2003, presiding over a period of significant growth. Next in line is his son-in-law Max Davis, vice president of business management.
You could drive down Clinton Street your whole life and not notice Buffalo Wire Works.
But the company has been around since horses and buggies. And business is only getting better.
The company was purchased in 2003 by Joseph Abramo, a manufacturing veteran who had come to Buffalo a few years earlier to be chief operating officer of Eastman Machine Co.
Buffalo Wire Works recently added plants in Nevada, Colorado and, last year, a second location on Clinton Street. There are more than 170 employees.
“We have a consumable product that’s in demand globally,” Abramo said. “We are the best-engineered product in the industry, bar none.”
The company makes mesh screens that help mining operations sift their materials, kind of like industrial coffee filters. That provides a stake in many industries – sugar, pharmaceuticals and paint, to name a few – that helps gird against dips in any single vertical.
With a heavy emphasis on research and development, the product line has expanded well past the metal mesh for which the company was traditionally known.
Buffalo Wire Works frequently recruits from the University at Buffalo’s Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences.
About 70 resettled refugees work at the company’s local sites.
“We spend a lot of time recruiting and developing our people. And we’re growing so there is a lot of room for advancement,” Abramo said. “Some of the refugees we hired are moving up the ranks into management.”
Buffalo Wire Works is celebrating the 150th year of continuous business this year, though its leaders aren’t sure of the exact birthday. For the 125th anniversary, former Mayor Anthony Masiello proclaimed Dec. 15 as “Buffalo Wire Works Day.”
Regardless, the company looks to be around for many more years. Abramo’s son-in-law, Max Davis, is vice president of business management and is in line to take over the business someday.
“Some of the products we’ve engineered are state-of-the-art in our industry, and we’re trying to improve on others that have been out there,” Davis said. “Our name is Buffalo Wire Works but we do a lot more than wire products.”
