A-1 Roll Company of Mt. Clemens, Michigan is an industry leader in bending steel bars, beams, channels, pipe, tubing – virtually every structural shape – into curves and angles.
With about 1,000 customers worldwide, A-1 Roll Company has provided conveyor systems to the Big Three, but also has shaped construction and structural steel for use in bridges, buildings, military vehicles, and airplanes. It rolled the steel for the glass awnings found on many Meijer stores throughout the Midwest, arches for the University of Michigan football stadium, fence posts for bridges, plus steel structures for hospitals, display firms, gas and oil refineries, and even oil rigs in the North Sea. Other projects around Detroit: Joe Louis Arena, the Palace of Auburn Hills, Ford Field, Comerica Park, and many exhibits at the North American International Auto Show just to name a few.
Richard Florka Sr. founded A-1 Roll Company in 1980 when he realized there was a market for a firm that could bend large structural shapes. However, the company’s roots go back to 1957 when Richard Sr.’s father, the late John Florka, started ABC Roll Company in Detroit.
“My father owned a grocery store business until a Kmart opened up nearby, “Richard Sr. said. “A friend recommended that he purchase a rolling machine (which was placed in the grocery store’s back room) and he went into business of rolling steel.
After founding A-1 Roll Company, Richard Sr. started with a few presses and a small roll machine, but as demand grew, the company built a new 25,000 square foot building to house larger machines for bigger projects. Now the firm has ten roll machines and five bending presses to serve its customers with an extremely fast turnaround time.
“We tell people that things come in here straight and they leave crooked. We bend things – we can make a steel bar into a pretzel”.