The Harmsco Story:

To understand how Harmsco, Inc. / Harmsco Filtration Products became an American family business success, we need to start back in World War II. John F. Harms was the 4th child with 9 brothers and sisters living on the family dairy farm in Ohio.

When WWII broke out, John enlisted in the Army and quickly rose to the rank of Second Lieutenant due to his mathematical and mechanical abilities. From 1940 – 1945 John trained 14-Man crews how to operate the 240mm Howitzer cannon, the largest in the world at the time. Remember, there was no computer assistance in that era so all targeting and charge strengths had to be manually calculated. The cannons had a 14 mile range and the crews he trained were very instrumental in defeating the Germans at the Italian front.

After the war, John went back to Ohio, where he married Laura and had two children.

The winter of 1955 was so full of snow that John simply could not shovel it any higher. This led to John, a very pregnant Laura, Terry and John Jr. packing up and moving to Florida where John became a commercial fisherman and worked with his brother-in-law Jack. A few months after arriving in Florida, Harold (Hank) H. Harms, II was Born.

While getting settled in Florida, John noticed that every new hotel and resort being constructed had a swimming pool and the only pool filters available were “garbage quality!” He bought a Heliarc welding machine and built several prototype filter housings in the kitchen of their rental home in West Palm Beach. Filter cartridges were bought and re-sold from a manufacturer John knew from the hydraulic cartridges he used on the Howitzer cannons during the war.

John would load the filter housings in the family station wagon and deliver them to the construction site, holding the housing in one hand, and accepting cash with the other. He would then go back home and build a few more units and repeated the process for several more years alternating between fishing and welding.

In 1958 John formed Harmsco, Inc. with financial help from his father, Harold H. Harms. Later, John rented a small warehouse in Lake Park, FL and hired his first employee where their hard work and solid products kept Harmsco growing solely in the swimming pool filter market with the BETTERFILTER®.

When his son Hank graduated from high school, he started working part-time at Harmsco and going to junior college. He went to his dad and said, “Dad, We need to Diversify!” and the Harmsco Industrial Filters branch was formed. The filtration industry took note of the many advantages, such as the Up- Flow Cartridge Filtration combined with Cyclonic Separation for dense solids which Harmsco filters provide. As a result, sales began to accelerate. In 1972, Harmsco developed a complete line of filter cartridges to market with the Harmsco filter housings. However, John Harms wasn’t satisfied with conventional filter cartridges that provide marginal performance. John pioneered Pleated Polyester filter cartridges, which to this day still outperform conventional cartridges by lowering filtration costs across the board.

In 1991, Harold (Hank) Harms II was elected CEO of Harmsco, Inc. During Hank’s tenure, there have been significant developments. Hurricane® XP filtration systems were introduced in 1992 and became an overnight success! Harmsco’s selection of replacement cartridge offerings are continuously expanding with new products being created as our customers come across new water quality issues such as LT2 compliance.

Production capacity has been accelerated and expansion has been made to our facilities, including the addition of a 90,000 sq. ft. manufacturing and distribution facility in Lake Wales, FL with future plans to expand production adding equipment and sterile medical-grade product development and clean room manufacturing environments.

In 2006 Harmsco welcomed the third-generation on board when brothers James Harms joined the team and Tommy Harms joined later in 2007 helping to grow the development and production of filtration product offerings. Today, we are a proven leader in the liquid filtration industry. Our products are marketed through an extensive growing network of distributors across the globe and our dedication to Research & Development is perpetually ongoing to create more and more new worldwide economical solutions for liquid filtration challenges as they come to us.

Harmsco is always open to OEM custom product manufacturing opportunities and to helping solve water quality problems with test sites and pilot study installations. For more information, please CONTACT US today!