An Interview with Michael Feldstein, Surface Technology Inc.

Electroless nickel plating services provider Surface Technology Inc. (STI, Ewing, N.J.)  was recently recognized as Products Finishing’s first-place ranking Top Shop for 2021 in its Top Shops Benchmarking Survey. The company is known for such innovations as its Composite Diamond Coating and its One-Plate, single component electroless nickel solution. Products Finishing recently sat down with STI president Michael Feldstein to hear more about the company’s capabilities, core values and the philosophy that has helped it achieve a Top Shop recognition year after year.

Surface Technology has qualified as a Top Shop multiple times. Describe what makes your company unique.

We specialize in composite electroless nickel with particles like PTFE (polytetrafluoroethylene), diamond, boron nitride, silicon carbide, and others, but both as a job shop plating shop and also as a manufacturer of the EN solutions to make these composite coatings. I think it’s that synergy that is so important for us because we know how to do the processes first-hand and can better support our customers of both EN solutions and coating services.

Can you talk a bit about the history of the company and how you got started in finishing?

My father was the head of a department at Sarnoff Research Labs of RCA in Princeton, N.J., a prestigious research center that supported various divisions of RCA, everything from electronics to aerospace. His department was in charge of metallizing. Back in the early 1970s, a big focus was applying metal coatings onto non-conductors like glass, plastics and graphite — things that were being used in the fast development of aerospace and electronic products.

When I was six years old my father sat me and my brothers down to tell us he was leaving his job to start his own company. From there, I grew up with the company. I was involved from a young age, doing things like cleaning up, washing lab coats and towels. When I was older, during high school, I began to do more serious work in the plating shop.

After college, I was not planning on being involved with the company, but it was a very busy time. We were moving into a new facility and I became really involved in the mechanics of setting up the new plating line, water treatment system, and pollution control systems. I really enjoyed what I was doing and asked my father if I could make a career of it. He was overjoyed. I’ve been running the company now for 25 years, since he passed away.

What would you say are STI’s core values as a company? What do you think makes the company a Top Shop?

I think that we have a good combination of imagination that leads to innovation and a practical focus. For instance, One-Plate, our single component electroless nickel system was designed to replace an old-fashioned three-component system. That solved a problem that most people didn’t recognize even existed.

We also really value the relationships that we have with partners, both from a technology point of view and from a marketing point of view. Because we’re also a plating shop, we can offer unique benefits to our chemical customers. For example, we’re happy to coat prototypes for our customers in any of our composite electroless nickel solutions so they can then see if it works for them.

We’re also committed to environmental protection. I think STI is the only fully solar-powered plating shop in the industry — completely zero discharge. We’ve always taken the attitude that environmental compliance may be costly, but it’s also a benefit to the company by forcing us to be more conservative with our resources — whether it’s energy or chemistry — which leads to higher performance in addition to being better for the environment.

What would you say is the most important thing for staying competitive in this industry?

It’s important for a company to keep its sense of imagination and willingness to try something new. We are always looking for new ways to do things, whether it’s something we develop ourselves or a solution we learn about from another company. Being willing to try new things is key to staying competitive.

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Listen to the full podcast interview with Michael Feldstein, available for streaming or download at pfonline.com/podcast.