The Millibar Team

Millibar founder, Brian Ferri, brings more than 30 years of vacuum engineering expertise to Millibar with a focus on designing and building intelligent vacuum solutions.

Brian learned vacuum technology as an apprentice to his father, Dick Ferri, who founded Vaccon in 1972. Working alongside his father in the early years of the business, Brian had an unparalleled opportunity to learn the physics of vacuum technology as a young person. This early indoctrination led him to a BS Degree in Engineering from the University of Massachusetts, and a pivotal role at Vaccon where he learned each aspect of the business from the ground up.

At just 9 years old, with the company still in the basement of his home, Brian assisted his dad with drilling holes in aluminum bar stock on an old manual Logan lathe. Throughout high school and college, Brian worked alongside his father producing the company’s latest venturi designs. While in college, Dick suffered a heart attack which required Brian to leave school for a semester to run the company. This pivotal moment forged Brian’s genuine interest in running a small business. Thrown into the fire, Brian operated every facet of the business from production to providing technical support to customers and distributor salespeople, working with vendors, making sales calls and developing custom solutions. As a person with a service profile and an engineering education it was clear to Brian that his passion, like his father’s, was to bring solutions to customers.

As the company grew, distributors were added and the company expanded to have a global presence. This afforded Brian the opportunity to travel the globe to teach vacuum to salespeople and to visit customers manufacturing all kinds of products…from the lights-out production of VHS tapes in Korea, semiconductor factories in Malaysia, powdered detergent in Atlanta, to handling fruit in California. Visiting customers exposed him to a variety of needs and each trip spawned new ideas for new products. His focus has always been to give the customer exactly what they needed; to save labor and components by integrating functions into one assembly to save overall parts, minimize space, minimize leaks and provide a smarter looking solution.

Fueled by a dream and an unbridled, curious fascination about the manufacturing process, Brian has formed Millibar, Inc. to bring intelligent vacuum solutions to global markets. Based on the idea that his customers need more than parts, Millibar will offer complete vacuum system design services, solutions integration from leading manufacturers as well as offer custom manufactured products.