Manufacturing/tech

The technology industry is a dominant force in Northern Colorado, with several companies ranking among the region’s top private-sector employers.

Northern Colorado is home to companies that specialize in everything from hardware manufacturing, computer programming and chip design to data mapping, Internet service and software development. Fort Collins alone boasts about 425 software companies, according to the Northern Economic Development Corp.

One of the region’s largest tech companies is Woodward, a publicly traded company that moved its corporate headquarters to Fort Collins from Rockford, Ill., in late 2006. The company, which manufactures energy-control systems, employs about 1,200 workers in Fort Collins and Loveland.

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The region also is home to some of the world’s top high-tech manufacturers, including Intel Corp., Advanced Micro Devices Inc., Agilent Technologies Inc. and Avago Technologies.

Avago, which makes semiconductors, employs nearly 700 people in Fort Collins, its largest manufacturing facility. The company is considering an expansion that could add another 136 jobs in the city.

Hewlett-Packard also boasts a sizeable workforce, with an estimated 1,200 to 1,500 employees, according to the NCEDC. However, the company has plans to lay off 9,000 U.S. workers as part of its reorganization.

Instrument manufacturing also is a major niche in Northern Colorado. Hach Co., a division of Denmark-based Danaher Corp., produces water-analysis equipment, employing more than 500 workers in Loveland.

The industry should experience future growth in the region thanks to the efforts of tech incubator Rocky Mountain Innosphere, which serves 28 innovative startups, including clean tech, software, hardware and bioscience companies. The startups generated $4.5 million revenue while employing nearly 100 full-time and 73 part-time employees last year, according to the Innosphere’s annual report.

Meanwhile, CSU Ventures, Colorado State University’s tech transfer organization, creates 1.5 startups per $100 million in research funding. The organization, which created five startups in 2010, establishes more companies per $100 million in research funding than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University and Johns Hopkins University.

The nonprofit and the Innovation Center of the Rockies recently entered into a partnership to speed up the creation of new businesses based on research by CSU faculty.

The industry, well-known for its ups and downs, faces multiple challenges ahead. In particular, medical technology companies face the prospect of a 2.3-percent federal excise tax that could lead to losses for small- and mid-sized medical-device companies and discourage venture capital investment.