A metal-finishing shop opens in Tulsa.
Willard A. Emery founds Southwest Metal Finishing Co., later Southwest United Industries, serving the aircraft plants and repair stations of a city that called itself the oil capital and was quietly becoming an aerospace town. Plating, anodizing, grinding: the unglamorous processes that every flight-critical part passes through. He builds the company with his sons, among them Willard S. Emery.
Work on the Space Shuttle program.
SWU's finishing processes reach NASA's Shuttle program: the kind of qualification work that turns a job shop into an institution.
Replacing chrome plating, with Boeing and Lufthansa watching.
Working alongside Boeing and Lufthansa, SWU helps develop, test, and put into service HVOF thermal spray as a replacement for hard chrome plating, an environmental and engineering problem the whole industry was circling. The third generation, Bill and Jim Emery, lead the company through it, meeting ever-rising environmental and quality standards and expanding by acquisition and greenfield construction. Operations grow to Tulsa, Ontario, and Querétaro.
Sold to Precision Castparts. BAK is formed.
In the mid-2000s the family partners with Argonaut Private Equity, a Tulsa firm that would work alongside three Emery companies across two generations. In 2012, in its sixtieth year of family ownership, Southwest United is sold to Precision Castparts, a Berkshire Hathaway company. Rather than let six decades of operating knowledge disperse, Bill Emery forms BAK Development, named for the initials of his three children, as the family office that carries it forward.
Back into the shop: Mingo Aerospace.
Mingo Aerospace, an FAA-certificated Tulsa repair station specializing in cargo loading systems and thermal spray, is acquired and run by the fourth generation. The same year, the family acquires Mingo Manufacturing; five years later it is sold back to its original ownership group, where it belonged.
Parker Village: raw land taken through entitlement and horizontal development, completed 2024; finished lots sold to Capital Homes, who built the homes.
Seven years of building.
Mingo grows: new capabilities, new certifications, new customers, new floor space. It is built from a small repair station into a leading component MRO. It is acquired by Blue Sea Capital, which combines it with Sunvair to form Sunvair Aerospace Group. We keep equity in the platform and take a board seat.
Sunvair sells to Greenbriar. We step off the board.
After four years helping steer the MRO roll-up, Sunvair Aerospace Group is acquired by Greenbriar Equity Group. We exit fully at close: eleven years, start to finish, in one company's story.
Park 107 (completed 2024): a 262-unit Class A community in Owasso, developed with Rose Rock; 50% GP. LP positions in Rose Rock's downtown Tulsa historic conversions. A seed position in ArborXR (2021, with follow-ons through 2024), a 2025 seed in Activ Energy, and a 2017–2023 hold in Mach Energy Services.
Back on the shop floor.
Cherry Creek Machine, a precision CNC machining company in Tulsa, is acquired, and the cycle begins again: new machinery, new certifications underway, new people. The same year we co-found OK Autonomous, led by Bill Emery, connecting autonomous-systems OEMs with Oklahoma's manufacturing base.
The Peoria-Mohawk campus rises.
A two-building advanced-manufacturing campus in north Tulsa, with Cherry Creek Machine anchoring the owner-operated building. The line on this page doesn't end here; it just hasn't been drawn yet.
