October is National Manufacturing Month, and one Garvin County company is celebrating by inviting the community to come take an inside look at its manufacturing facility.
The Burford Corporation in Maysville will hold its first-ever Family and Community Open House Saturday, Oct. 4, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Megan Sutton, HR manager at Burford, said the premise behind National Manufacturing Month is for companies to educate their communities about what they do in manufacturing.
“In our community, I consistently hear people are unaware of who we are and what we actually do,” Sutton said. “And if they are familiar with us, they often don't know the global impact that we actually have.”
So, what exactly does Burford manufacture?
“If you’ve ever bought a loaf of bread that has a little wire twist tie, chances are the machinery that put that twist tie on came from Burford,” Sutton said. “Or if you’ve ever eaten at a fast-food restaurant and had a bun that has that little decorative split in the top of it, it’s our machinery that makes that split in the dough before it bakes. We build the machinery that goes into commercial bakeries that produces these products.”
The company, founded by father and son partners Earl and Charles Burford, has been operating in Maysville since its creation in 1961.
During World War II, when labor was in short supply, Earl Burford is credited with inventing several labor-saving devices for farming, including an automatic wire hay baler.
Later, when commercial baking began to catch on, Sutton said, the Burford’s were presented with the opportunity to design a way to close and secure the plastic bags that were starting to be used for bread packaging. They came up with a machine modeled closely after Earl’s automatic wire hay baler—Burford’s first twist tie machine.
Other bakery machines have been added to the company’s production line over the years, including machines to oil pans, spread sesame seeds or other toppings on buns and breads, or make decorative splits in buns.
Charles Burford died in 2013, and the company was purchased by the Middleby Corporation in 2017.
Sutton said the acquisition by Middleby, which owns other manufacturing enterprises around the world, many of them related to the baking industry, has been a positive move for Burford.
“I think that is part of what’s pushed our growth, becoming part of Middleby.” Sutton said. “They’ve been hands off, because we’re pretty successful on our own. But now they can go to someone who’s building a new bakery and say, ‘What do you need? We can fulfill your need from door to door.’” Each of the company’s machines are engineered to order, often to custom specifications from a specific bakery. Sutton said though the function and bones of the machines might be the same, each is unique.
All of the machines manufactured by Burford are built at the Maysville facility, with about 50% being sold domestically, Sutton said, and the rest sold internationally.
“For such a small company we have a really big footprint,” Sutton said.
In 2024, the company added a new building to its campus and redesigned its entire manufacturing floor. Sutton said they also opened new positions to help support the growth the company has been experiencing.
Andrea Caldwell, production support coordinator at Burford, said the company has basically doubled its output in the last five years.
“To me it’s just amazing that a small Maysville company, the stretch and the span that we have,” Caldwell said.
Burford employs about 85 people at the Maysville facility, according to Sutton, with many of those having more than 40 years tenure with the company.
“Burford is very much a family company,” Caldwell said.
That feeling of family is something that is rooted in the company’s culture, and also played a part in inspiring the Oct. 4 open house.
“We have a 20-year employee that lives in town, his family lives in town, and he said, ‘My mom’s never been out here.’” Sutton said. “So we were like, ‘Let’s invite her.’” “We have a lot of longtime employees that live here. And so this day for us is also a family day. Invite your family out. Let them see where mom or dad works and what they do,” Sutton said. “And on top of that, let’s invite the community out and educate them as well.”
“We want people to come out and see where we’re at, see what we do, see what machines we build. We’re going to have live demonstrations throughout the day of different equipment,” Caldwell said.
Guided tours of the facility, at 11284 State Highway 74, will be offered at 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. The Maysville FFA chapter is volunteering their time to help with the open house, and Burford will have a “tyer,” or twist tie machine, manned throughout the day for demonstrations. There will also be food, games and inflatables, along with displays showing Burford’s history and its impact on the baking industry.
