Page 39 - BusinessWest July 7, 2025

“I think we have
a chance to
re-industrialize in
a grassroots way
and build cool
stuff while also
building robust
manufacturing
jobs, which left
Holyoke 40, 50
years ago.”
hardtech startup spaces, pre-zoned industrial parcels,
access to I-90 and I-91 connecting to major cities, airport
access, and regional rail and bus lines;
• Talent and workforce, including an existing manu-
facturing base, a rich higher-education ecosystem, tech-
nical training programs, and workforce supports like
MassHire; and
• A number of other factors, from a strong local indus-
trial supply chain to available pools of both public and
private grant funding.
“We want to pitch why we’re here, why some of these
other companies are here, and just try to get that into
a communicable message where other people can say,
‘oh, there’s something going on in Holyoke,’” Stone said.
“We want to show why it’s a good place, specifically for
hardtech companies that are past their startup stage and
into their scale-up stage.”
Companies like Clean Crop.
“Right now, we’re focused on seed treatment and
finding ways to reduce overall pesticide use, so we can
displace a lot of existing tools and give growers the same
yields or better,” co-founder Dan White said. “We found
a really strong initial market in leafy greens. So we’ve
got quite a lot of demand that we’re just growing into right now, but
we’re on track to expand our facility here to full utilization by the
end of this year. And then the next step will be establishing our first
facility in California sometime next year.”
White said it’s gratifying to see HardTech Holyoke grow since its
first inception.
“When I look across at these other companies, the same reasons
that we came here are why I think a lot of other folks are coming as
well. We have really competitive utility rates, particularly electricity.
But also, the city government has been incredibly helpful, and the
ecosystem partners like Cofab are a huge part of the story too.”
Alex Nichols is one of three founders of florrent, a Sunderland-
based startup that took part in HardTech Holyoke. The company
is developing a material innovation that enables performance
Alex Nichols says he and his two co-founders of florrent took
advantage of some specialized equipment at UMass Amherst
for early prototyping, then decided to stay in the region.
Staff Photo
improvement in supercapacitor technologies.
The founders, Nichols explained, are UMass Amherst alumni
who wound up using specialized lab space on that campus after
they graduated. “They have some very specific equipment that
allowed us to do early prototyping. That really brought us to the
region. We stayed, we
hired a team out here,
and we’re here to stay.”
HardTech
Continued on page 41 >>
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