Kurt J Lesker Co

Kurt J Lesker Co, doing business as Kurt J Lesker, a woman-owned small business manufacturer and distributor headquartered in Clairton, Pennsylvania, supplies advanced vacuum technology equipment—vacuum chambers, deposition systems, pumps, feedthroughs, sputtering targets, and precision scientific instrumentation—to federal research and development agencies as a prime contractor on 685 recent awards (98% of portfolio) and as a subcontractor on 15 sub-awards.

The company competes predominantly full-and-open across federal agencies; no set-aside category recurs as a defining characteristic of its prime footprint, though individual awards carry Total Small Business, Woman-Owned Small Business, or no set-aside designations. Kurt J Lesker's customer concentration aligns tightly with federal R&D priorities in materials science, electronics fabrication, and advanced manufacturing. The top five funding agencies account for 48% of awards and 74% of combined potential value. The National Institute of Standards and Technology leads by both measures—110 awards worth $11.2 million combined potential value—followed by the Office of Naval Research (97 awards, $5.7 million), the Army Materiel Command Research Development and Engineering Command (38 awards, $3.4 million), NASA's Shared Services Center (53 awards, $1.9 million), and NASA's Glenn Research Center (34 awards, $887 thousand). The two customer rankings diverge moderately: NIST and ONR dominate both counts and dollars, but Army's research spending and NASA Glenn's equipment procurements punch above their award volume. Representative prime work includes a $520 thousand cost-plus-fixed-fee definitive contract with NASA Glenn Research Center for an ultra-high-vacuum deposition system for metal and dielectric fabrication (awarded September 2024), a $738 thousand firm-fixed-price purchase order from NIST for a tri-layer system (August 2024), a $699 thousand purchase order from the Army Research Laboratory for an advanced atomic layer deposition system with remote inductively-coupled plasma source (September 2022), a $362 thousand thin-film deposition system definitive contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (August 2022), and a $538 thousand purchase order from NASA Langley Research Center for a PVD500 RF/DC sputter deposition tool (May 2024).

Kurt J Lesker holds five named indefinite-delivery contracts: a $1.5 million IDC with the Navy (1333ND20DNB680032) under which eight task orders have been placed, and four smaller NIST IDCs (DOCSB134113CQ0017, DOCSB134117CQ0019, DOCSB134117CQ0022, and 1333ND18DNB620012) collectively supporting $241 thousand in task order work. The company's award portfolio spans 700 total awards (prime and sub combined) with $31.2 million in combined potential value and $34.4 million in combined obligated dollars across 58 distinct customer agencies. Activity has remained stable—17 awards in 2022 to 19 in 2024, with 16 in 2025 and 18 in 2026 year-to-date—and a modest recompete cliff shows seven awards (combined potential value $698 thousand) reaching ultimate completion in the next twenty-four months.

In its subcontractor role, Kurt J Lesker supplies sputtering targets, vacuum hardware, and chamber assemblies to primes including UT-Battelle LLC (Oak Ridge National Laboratory management and operations contracts), General Atomics (inertial confinement fusion target research and development), Honeywell Federal Manufacturing & Technologies (National Security Campus operations), Fluor Marine Propulsion (Naval Nuclear Laboratory management), Peraton Inc. (NASA GSFC environmental test and integration services), HII Technical Solutions Corporation (Naval Research Laboratory pulsed-power systems), and Hamilton Sundstrand Corporation (analyzer and detector module work). The company operates a subsidiary, KDF Technologies LLC, a woman-owned small business limited liability company, but the source does not indicate distinct capability framing or operational separation.

Kurt J Lesker's capability portfolio is tightly defined by vacuum science and thin-film deposition. NAICS concentration shows 138 awards in Semiconductor Machinery Manufacturing, 72 in the same category under a second NAICS code variant, 54 in Analytical Laboratory Instrument Manufacturing, 53 in Other Professional Equipment and Supplies Merchant Wholesalers, and 43 in Pump and Pumping Equipment Manufacturing. PSC codes reinforce the specialization: 238 awards under Laboratory Equipment and Supplies, 139 under Compressors and Vacuum Pumps, 28 under Combination and Miscellaneous Instruments, 20 under Environmental Chambers and Related Equipment, and 15 under Semiconductor Devices. Performance occurs primarily at the company's Clairton, Pennsylvania facility, with delivery to customer locations across NASA research centers (Glenn, Langley, Goddard), NIST laboratories (Boulder, Gaithersburg), Naval Research Laboratory, Army Research Laboratory, Air Force Research Laboratory, and multiple federal research centers. The company is not a vehicle-focused player—it wins mostly spot purchases and small task orders rather than anchoring large program vehicles—and its federal footprint serves as a steady-state component supplier and specialty equipment manufacturer to the permanent R&D infrastructure of civilian and defense agencies.