CICERO — A pair of cargo containers is helping the environmental control system manufacturer Air Innovations impress clients.

They’re not just cargo containers, though. The two 160-square-foot shells have been outfitted as a psychrometric testing facility for analyzing equipment at temperatures ranging from 0 degrees to 120 degrees Fahrenheit.

“It goes a long way in helping high-tech customers get comfortable with what you can do and how you’re going to test,” says Michael Wetzel, Air Innovations’ president and CEO. “We used to not even show our customers our old test cell. It would do nothing to provide value in the face of trying to win contracts or show capabilities. But now this one is state of the art.”

Air Innovations uses the new cells for research and development, testing its heating, ventilation, air-conditioning, and refrigeration designs. They’ve been operational for about a year and are used daily.

The company manufactures its own lines of wine-cellar cooling, refrigerated floral display-case, air purification, and hospital contamination-control products. It also builds climate-control systems for clients in material handling, pharmaceutical manufacturing, injection molding, process manufacturing, laboratories, and archival storage. 

Constructing the test cells using cargo containers allowed the company to install them without eating into the floor space at its 40,000-square-foot Cicero headquarters at 7000 Performance Drive. Most of the two cells rest outside of the building — they jut out from the facility’s outside wall, similar to the way a tractor-trailer nests at a loading dock.

 Except the test cells have been built into Air Innovations’ facility. They sit on the ground and open onto its factory floor.

“We didn’t want to lose that much floor space inside the facility,” Wetzel says. “And the noise of the machines that drive each of those cells — because there’s two air conditioners and heaters driving each of those — that’s all outside. So that’s not inside the workspace.”

Installing the new test chambers cost approximately $100,000. Air Innovations used its own cash to pay for the work, along with a $30,000 grant from Empire State Development.

J D Taylor Construction Corp. of DeWitt handled site work and permitting drawings. O’Connell Electric Co., Inc., which is headquartered in Victor in Ontario County, was the electrical contractor for the project, while Air Innovations performed much of the setup itself.

“Essentially we were the general contractor,” Wetzel says. “We bought a software package, and then getting it set up the way we wanted, it was our own labor.”

The test chambers allow Air Innovations to test equipment in “inside” and “outside” conditions simultaneously. One chamber can replicate the conditions in which a piece of equipment will be sitting, while the other can challenge its capability to produce the conditions it was designed to produce.

That creates tests that are similar to actual operating conditions, Wetzel says. The new equipment also helps Air Innovations calculate data more quickly and waste less time, according to the company’s director of engineering, Scott Toukatly.

“We’re more confident in the data, so it saves on potential retesting,” he says. “Retesting is usually need-based on suspect data. Retesting is now less of an issue. It’s a time-saver.”

Air Innovations is also open to the possibility of renting the chambers to local companies that need access to an environmental testing facility, according to Wetzel. It has yet to do so, but believes a market for that service exists because such facilities are relatively rare, he says.

The company is on pace to generate about $10 million in revenue in its current fiscal year, which ends on June 30. That’s up about $1 million from the previous year.

The firm employs 43 people, having grown to that level from employment in the “upper 30s” about five years ago, Wetzel says.

“It’s been a slow to steady growth,” he says. “We’re very diversified. It’s not any one category of our business. But because we’re so diversified, we’ve been able to stay strong, even through the recession. We’re not looking at a huge boom of employees, but thankfully we’re continuing to grow and hold the line. It’s not easy in this environment.”       

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com