The TRAK Company history can be traced back over 55 years.
TRAK Microwave Corporation had its genesis in 1960, when Jim McCullouch came to Tampa from TRAK Electronics in Wilton Connecticut to open a branch office in Florida. He brought with him an engineer, a production manager and began producing triode tube oscillators.
In early 1964, TRAK Microwave was purchased by Westech. The sale enabled TRAK to build a new facility on what is now Eisenhower Boulevard and where the TRAK Microwave Corporation is based today. Westech later became Tech-Sym Corporation.
The Ferrite product line was formed in October of 1969 when the Sperry ferrite operation in Clearwater was purchased and circulators and isolators quickly became a growing business which was expanded when E&M Labs of California was acquired and incorporated in 1975.
In September of 1987, TRAK expanded to Europe by purchasing Channel Microwave based in Dundee Scotland. This new wholly-owned European subsidiary, TRAK Microwave Limited (TRAK Europe), was expanded in 1992 by the acquisition of the passive microwave business of Albacom Limited.
Albacom had its beginnings as part of a management buy-out from Ferranti during the financial and legal difficulties that ultimately forced Ferranti into bankruptcy in December 1993.
Albacom produced tubes and passive RF components which included ferrite isolators and circulators. TRAK’s primary product focus was Ferrite microwave products serving the military, industrial, and wireless markets.
TRAK in Dundee were a technology and export driven company and began its journey to support the space industry in 1993 with the delivery of its first space qualified device To Selenia Spazio and a few years later was recognised by becoming the recipient of the Queen’s Award for Export Achievement in both 1995 and 1996.
The business grew rapidly with the space group rapidly establishing itself as the premier supplier of space qualified ferrite components in Europe and, over the course of the following decades, the world; a position unrelinquished to this day.
In January 1997, TRAK Communications Inc. was formed by reorganising TRAK Microwave Limited and Daden-Anthony Associates as separate entities and combining TRAK Microwave Corporation, TRAK Microwave Limited, Daden-Anthony Associates, Tecom Industries (another Tech-Sym Subsidiary), and TRAK Ceramics Inc,, as individual companies under the banner of TRAK Communications.
In June 2000 Integrated Defense Technologies (IDT), a portfolio of defense electronics companies owned by Veritas Capital Fund L.P, purchased Tech-Sym. Tech-Sym’s operations were merged into IDT’s portfolio of companies where former Tech-Sym subsidiaries, Metric Systems Corporation and TRAK Communications continued to operate as separate concerns.
In 2004 Smiths Group purchased the TRAK Communications from Veritas and TRAK Europe was structured into 2 business units; Space/ Military and Wireless communications with the latter establishing a manufacturing operation in Shanghai and later, after several acquisitions, formed the Kaelus brand.
Today TRAK Microwave is part of the Smiths Interconnect Microwave Components business unit formed in 2014 with Florida RF Labs and EMC Technology.