Flanders Precisionaire of Utah history

The company aimed to develop lands under the Carey Act of 1894, which authorized a state to receive up to a million acres of arid land from the federal government on condition it was reclaimed under the law's requirements.

Work was commenced in 1907 at a dam site town hundred yards upstream from where the recently rebuilt San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake City Railroad crossed the Sevier River, some four miles north of Burtner.

First organized 19 March 1908 as the Oasis Land and Water Company, a Nevada Corporation, they entered into agreement with the Deseret and Melville companies to procure a half interest in the Sevier Bridge Reservoir and its water rights.

The town's name was changed to Delta at the behest of the new company in 1911, and the extended land sales boom directly stimulated its growth as well.

In 1925 the area produced more than one-fourth of the total seed harvested in the entire nation, bringing impressive profits to many growers.

Flanders was founded as Flanders Filters, Inc. in 1950.

Management, which by this point included Thomas T. Allan, who joined Flanders in 1964, decided to build a new facility, a decision that also led to the company's abandonment of Riverhead as its headquarters.

Beginning in 1968, Flanders began to move its entire operation from Riverhead to Washington, North Carolina.

At the time of the acquisition, Elite, which was formed in 1986, operated as a publicly traded corporate shell without any significant assets.

Amerson joined Flanders in 1987 as the company's chief financial officer.

By 1989 durable goods employment amounted to 67 percent of total manufacturing employment numbers.

Disclaimer: Information on this site was converted from a hard cover book published by University of Utah Press in 1994.

The move toward diversification was triggered in December 1995, when Flanders was acquired by a company named Elite Acquisitions, Inc.

In January 1996, Elite formed a new subsidiary named Flanders Corporation (Flanders Filters, Inc. became an Elite subsidiary one month earlier) and merged with the subsidiary, leaving Flanders Corporation as the parent company for Flanders Filters, Inc.

At the end of 1997, after completing several small acquisitions during the year, the company secured a $30 million credit line with SunTrust Banks to finance further acquisitions.