This 3,900-square-foot home in Webster recently sold for $399,900 less then three weeks after going on the market. Wochit
Radax Industries has been holding things together for half-century.
The Webster-based firm is a machine shop that bills itself as “fastener specialists.” Radax makes products like screws and dowel pins, threaded- and non-threaded fasteners, that are used in an assortment of items.
“We’re a manufacturer of a variety of specialty parts for a variety of industries,” said company owner and president Richard Sacco. “Our markets include the irrigation, electrical, and automotive industries, even small parts for guns and hydraulics. It’s quite a variety of products.”
His parents, Rocco and Barbara Sacco, started Radax in 1967. Rocco had worked for a machine shop and was a partner in another before venturing off on his own and founding Radax.
The name ties in, at least somehow, with one of the area’s industrial giants at the time.
“My parents came up with it,” Richard Sacco said. “It had something to do with Xerox, but I’m not sure how.”
More: Monroe Wheelchair, a Top Workplace, has eye on rehabilitative industry
More: Like the look of Powerade? Precision Laser's technology boosts major brands
Clients are both domestic and international. One of Radax’s primary markets is irrigation sprinklers used in agriculture, and one of the firm’s biggest customers is a California-based company named Hunter Industries. Another is McMaster-Carr in the Chicago area, a longtime mail-order supplier of industrial materials and supplies.
Sacco said that “not a lot” of customers are in Rochester, but there are some notable exceptions.
“When one of the elephants at the (Seneca Park) zoo had an infection in his tusk, we made the screw that was threaded into the tusk to hold it in place,” Sacco said. That was back in 1984, when a zoo veterinarian performed a first-of-its-kind procedure that surgically implanted a common setscrew inside the tusk of a female elephant named Genny C.
Another example of Radax’s work is way out there.
“When Kodak put a camera on the moon, our parts were in it,” Sacco added.
The firm started in Phelps, Ontario County, and moved to Webster in 1969. Three years later, Radax moved to its current facility on Basket Road, a facility that encompasses 50,000 square feet with the production area and warehouse. There’s a lot being produced here: Sacco estimated the output at a million items per day.
Radax has always been a family affair.
Barbara Sacco, who died in June, was involved from the beginning. Richard joined the business in 1972 — “It was either that or the Air Force,” he said with a laugh — after toiling at jobs in the fast-food burger business (Carrols) and at the old Willow Point Park in Webster.
“My father said, ‘Try working for me for a few years,’ and that was the end of that,” Sacco said. “Once you start making some money, it’s hard to turn away.”
Sacco’s son, Benjamin, is part of the third generation, serving as Radax general manager.
Family ties hold things together at Radax Industries, just like the fasteners the company has made for 50 years.
Alan Morrell is a Rochester-based freelance writer.
Radax Industries
Founded: 1967
Location: 700 Basket Road, Webster
Executives: Richard Sacco, owner and president
Employees: 22
Website: www.radax.com