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Business View Magazine
SMICO Manufacturing Co.
Manufacturing peace of mind since 1937
To Erick Heald, President of the Southwest Milling and
Industrial Company (SMICO), “separating the wheat from
the chaff” is not merely an idiomatic expression – it is very
the core business of this Oklahoma City-based company
that manufactures the feeders, screeners, separators,
sifters, shakers, sizers, and scalpers that literally separate
what is useful or valuable in a product or commodity from
what is useless or worthless.
The range of industries that utilize SMICO products in or-
der to separate their own particular “wheat” from their
less than useful “chaff” is extensive. It includes: mining
and aggregate production, foundry and concrete produc-
tion, construction, food and pharmaceutical production,
oil exploration and refining, recycling, and the glass/plas-
tic industries, to name just a few. But SMICO is also his-
torically rooted in the feed processing and milling sector.
Back in 1930’s Chicago, when Frank Shidler began the
Productive Equipment Company, his original clients were
the milling and feed processing companies that serviced
