COMPANY HISTORY


Niagara Dispensing Technologies (NDT), headquartered in Western New York, designs and manufactures high-speed draft beer dispense systems that will fundamentally and permanently alter the beer dispensing landscape. The founding members are proven leaders with experience and expertise in technical innovation, draft beer beverage marketing, and high tech business building.

Through contacts in the beer dispensing marketplace it became apparent to NDT founders that their expertise in fluid technology could revolutionize draft beer dispensing methods.  After extensive
market research and beta site testing of EXACTAP™ prototypes the founders concluded that the
beer dispensing marketplace, which has changed very little in two centuries, is more than ready to embrace innovation.

Simply stated, EXACTAP™ products deliver a sophisticated, user-friendly, high tech solution to draft beer dispensing needs. NDT’s unique and novel technology platform allows EXACTAP™ products to address needs in pour methods, foam head control, speed, flow rate, measured amount, beer range, and beer yield, to name a few. EXACTAP™ is a complete solution.  Recently introduced low-tech
beer dispensing products are not.

NDT products will revolutionize the world of draft beer dispensing, fundamentally changing the methodology by which draft beer is dispensed. Future NDT products will also introduce pattern shifts driven by market need and based on new and highly advanced technical platforms.

Management Profiles
The Niagara Dispensing Technologies’ management team brings to this venture an unusually strong combination of business experience and technical savvy.  Most startup companies have strength in either technology or business management, but NDT has both – and in the very industry in which NDT will compete.  This management team has technical roots that extend back to the very earliest origins of the rapid beer dispensing idea.  Together, they have insight into the business needs of the draft beer markets and of the product configurations and characteristics required of market success.

Iver Phallen, Chairman of the Board 

Phallen played the formative role in inventing and patenting the first hydraulic rapid beer dispenser,
and has invented the underlying devices and methods used in NDT designs.  Phallen founded Oden Corporation in 1980, launching the company on the notion of bringing emerging microelectronic and servo technologies to selected packaging machinery markets.  As founder and president of Oden Corporation and of Niagara Pump Corporation, he has over 25 years of experience in inventing, starting, and running high tech businesses and holds thirteen patents with several more pending. Phallen will serve NDT as Chairman of the Board.



Ken Burke, President & CEO

Burke brings to NDT the proven experience and necessary expertise to design, coordinate, and directly manage the business building process.  Burke is trained in finance, has run sales and marketing groups, and has managed the development of sophisticated new technology products. Prior to joining NDT, Burke was instrumental in the successful start-up of InnovX Corporation in 2001. Before InnovX, Burke was  President at Leica Microsystems, a mid-sized manufacturer and international marketer of diagnostic instrumentation; and  previously  held positions as President, General Manager and Sales Manager at Metrosonics, a manufacturer of portable low-power instrumentation for the health/safety
and power monitoring markets. 



David Cummings, CFO and VP of Administration

Cummings has over thirty years of comprehensive financial and accounting experience and extensive knowledge in all segments and aspects of the financial affairs of a manufacturing company. He has successfully served as a controller or CFO for three operating manufacturing companies and brings particular and critical knowledge of administrative organization in manufacturing including
state-of-the-art MRP systems.  Cummings joined Oden Corporation and its subsidiary Niagara Pump Corporation as CFO in 1998. Previously he worked as Controller with a specialty metals processing enterprise.



Doug Vogt, VP of Engineering

Vogt has been the lead member of the Niagara Dispensing Technologies “REDI” team (research-engineer-develop- implement) working on EXACTAP™ products.  He worked to develop and engineer the first hydraulic rapid beer dispenser from the lab to a beta site product.  Vogt will continue to
manage the REDI process for NDT.  Vogt’s previous experience includes over 10 years as Vice President of R&D at Niagara Pump Corporation where he successfully brought several new products from
conception to production, and four years as Project Manager of large capital improvement projects with Eastman Kodak, where he completed numerous $3 to $4 million projects at the photochemical facility.



Thomas Gagliano, Managing Director – Europe

Gagliano joins the Niagara Dispensing Technologies (NDT) team, bringing over ten years of progressive experience in fluid/thermal sciences technology development.  He holds Bachelor and Masters of Science Degrees from the University of California Irvine and Stanford University, respectively.  Gagliano’s work on the rapid beer dispensing concept coincides with that of Phallen and Vogt.  Professionally, Tom has focused on fluid and thermal technology development covering a wide breadth of industries including oil production and measurement, electric vehicle thermal management,
bio-medical sciences, refrigeration sciences, forest fire control, and of course, carbonated beverage dispense.  Tom has been named inventor on 13 patents related to the fluid/thermal sciences, and has had the experience of starting and managing a small technology start-up company.  Gagliano has the perfect combination of technical expertise, knowledge of European markets, and entrepreneurial zeal to serve as NDT’s European director.