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What ever happened to them?

Celebrating 30 years of Northern Colorado Business Report and BizWest business coverage

Northern Colorado firms that have declined or disappeared over the past 30 years

The past 30 years have seen the rise of many businesses in Northern Colorado — think Otter Products LLC or Woodward Inc. But the three decades also have seen the decline, and in some cases the disappearance, of other firms that long served as the backbone of the region’s economy.

Applied Computer Technology Inc.

Founded in 1989, Applied Computer Technology Inc. saw its heyday of producing microcomputer systems for government and university users ebb by the mid-1990s with the rise of competitors such as Dell Computer Corp., Gateway 2000 Inc. and Compaq Computer Corp.

By the late ‘90s, Applied Computer turned to its interest service provider business WebAccess to save the firm from mounting losses.

The gambit failed, and ACT sold off WebAccess, its last remaining asset, in 1999.

Advanced Energy

Power-controls developer Advanced Energy Industries Inc. (Nasdaq: AEIS) in 2020 shifted its headquarters from Fort Collins to Denver, a move that represented at the time the loss of a $2.64 billion corporate headquarters from Northern Colorado.

The company, which was founded in Fort Collins in 1981 and had been headquartered at 1625 Sharp Point Drive, telegraphed its move a couple of years prior to heading to the Mile High City. In an interview with BizWest in February 2019, CEO Yuval Wasserman said the company would open an office in Denver to be closer to its legal and accounting advisers, but would not relocate the official headquarters there.

Around the time of the 2020 move, AE officials told BizWest that the company had signed a new 15-year lease on its research facility in the city’s northeast corner. A pair of investors traded two Fort Collins buildings occupied by Advanced Energy the following year for a combined $30.65 million.

Electronic Fab Technology Corp.

Once a Greeley employment powerhouse, small-lot electronics manufacturing and repair services provider Electronic Fab Technology Corp. began its decline in the late 1990s after a slowdown in the electronics business driven by the Asian economic slump.

In 1996, EFTC announced that it would cut nearly 150 jobs, or about a quarter of its workforce.

Three years later, the firm vacated its 88,000-square-foot building in Greeley when it shifted its headquarters to Denver, then phased out the Greeley operation entirely.

By 2003, United Agri Products Inc. announced that it would move about 130 employees from two work sites into the former EFTC building at 7251 Fourth St.

**In 2024, Antech Diagnostics has opened a research-and-development laboratory in a former Heska Corp. facility in Loveland. Courtesy Antech**

Heska Corp.

Loveland-based veterinary products supplier Heska Corp. was stirred into candy and pet food giant Mars Inc. during summer 2023.

The privately held umbrella company that operates brands such as M&M’s and Pedigree paid $1.3 billion for the firm that was formed in 1988 as Paravax Inc., which specialized in the development of animal vaccines and went public in 1997.

Prior to its acquisition by Mars, Heska had been increasingly active in the diagnostics space since the early 2023 acquisition of Boulder-based MBio Diagnostics Inc., which did business as LightDeck Diagnostics.

Antech Diagnostics Inc., the North American arm of Mars Petcare, opened a research and development hub last August at Heska’s former home at 4550 Byrd Drive in Loveland. About 140 employees worked at the facility at the time. Antech closed the longtime Heska facility at 3760 Rocky Mountain Ave. in May 2025 and moved employees into the Byrd Drive building.

The facility houses the R&D lab as well as customer support, operations, warehouse, fulfillment, sales enablement, marketing and other support functions, the company said last year.

Allercept, Antech’s allergy-medication business, is also headquartered at the Loveland site, as is its veterinary diagnostics laboratory.

Startek

Call-center giant Startek Inc. (NYSE: STK) was born in Greeley — well, actually, the firm was called StarPak Inc. when it was founded in 1987 — but no longer has operations in the city.

The firm at one time operated two call centers in Greeley. One shut down in 2005 and the other closed up shop in 2018, resulting in nearly 200 lost jobs.

The company continues to operate call centers in Greenwood Village, but a facility in Grand Junction closed in 2020 around the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

State Farm

When NCBR launched three decades ago, State Farm’s Northern Colorado operations center was based in Evans. And in the 30 years since, the Bloomington, Illinois-based insurance giant moved to Greeley, occupied a giant campus in that city, then ultimately abandoned it during the COVID-19-era shift towards working from home.

State Farm was one of the first major Northern Colorado employers to abandon its physical office spaces and adopt a fully work-from-home employment model in 2020. As recently as 2018, State Farm leased three buildings in the campus on Promontory Circle that housed about 1,100 workers.

State Farm used to own the three buildings on Promontory Circle. In 2013, the company sold them for $52.7 million, part of a larger sale of 23 buildings at 18 locations nationwide. State Farm built the buildings to form its Greeley Operations Center in the early 2000s and had a 15-year lease, with five-year options.

The campus was quickly sold again, in 2014, to an affiliate of Phoenix-based JDM Partners LLC, former owner of the Phoenix Suns and Arizona Diamondbacks, for $60.8 million.

Meatpacking giant JBS USA made an attempt to acquire the 450,000-square-foot ex-State Farm campus on Promontory Circle, but Greeley city officials rejected acquisition of the current JBS headquarters building, which would have facilitated the State Farm purchase.

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