History

Creare was founded in 1961 by engineers with a passion for creativity and a drive for excellence. The company’s original roots grew around expertise in fluid dynamics—serving especially the turbomachinery and nuclear industries during the 1960s and 1970s. During the 1980s, Creare branched into the energy, aerospace, cryogenics, and materials processing industries, among others. The 1990s brought growth in software, controls, and biomedical applications.

Today, Creare remains a privately-owned engineering services company, committed to solving problems for clients and commercializing our own proprietary technologies through licensing or the creation of independent product companies. The growth and vitality of Creare and of the family of companies that trace their origins to us is compelling evidence of success. While Creare itself remains a small business, the family of independently-owned and operated companies that are part of this family now employ over 1500 people and generate annual revenues in excess of $250 million. Independent companies with Creare roots include:

• Hypertherm, now the world’s largest manufacturer of plasma cutting tools, was founded in 1968 to advance and market technology first developed at Creare. Hypertherm is consistently recognized as one of the most innovative and employee-friendly companies in New Hampshire.
• Creonics, founded in 1982, is now part of the Allen-Bradley division of Rockwell International. It develops and manufactures motion control systems for a wide variety of industrial processes.
• Spectra, a manufacturer of high-speed ink jet print heads and ink deposition systems (now a subsidiary of Markem Corporation) was formed in 1984 using sophisticated deposition technology originally developed at Creare.
• Creare’s longstanding expertise in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) gave birth to a uniquely comprehensive suite of CFD software that is now marketed by Fluent (a subsidiary of Aavid Thermal Technologies Inc.), a Creare spin-off company that was started in 1988.
• Mikros, founded in 1991, is a provider of precision micro-machining services using advanced electric discharge machining technology initially developed at Creare.