LEWISTON – Jack Jensen isn’t interested in the easy way out.

For the CEO of Elmet Technologies, the whole future of his specialty metals business lies in finding solutions for very complicated problems – the more difficult the better.

“We make value-added products,” he said of his 230-person staff. “If it’s difficult, that’s what we want.”

Products like components to make a new generation CAT scan device. And enhanced equipment to manufacture silicon wafer chips for semiconductors.

These newer, high-tech products are part of the reason the company was able to increase its gross profit margin from 30.3 in 2005 to 33.8 in 2006. The increase comes despite a $4.8 million decline in sales, led by the loss of a couple of customers with low-margin products. Elmet makes a billion lighting filaments a year for major lighting companies, and custom designs, engineers and manufactures products using advanced enabling materials (AEM) for industrial customers.

“Staying with high-tech, difficult products is the way to prosper,” said Jensen, who noted that the higher the degree of difficulty, the higher the corresponding price. “Our focus will be on AEM going forward.”

To get there, Jensen is in the midst of taking the company public. The process was started last fall when Elmet was acquired by Harbor Acquisition Corp., a specialty purchase group that buys companies with the intent of helping them go public. Once the process is complete, Harbor disappears and Elmet remains as its own independent company.

“It is a more difficult road, but I’ve chosen it to create a stronger foundation for our employees,” said Jensen, who considered a private equity acquisition for the company, but feared new owners would load Elmet with debt and possibly jeopardize jobs. This way, “we’ll get the additional capital we need to grow the business,” he said, and maintain more control over Elmet’s future.

The proposal is undergoing federal Securities and Exchange Commission review, and must be approved by Harbor shareholders. Jensen is keeping his fingers crossed that Elmet will be a publicly traded corporation in the near future.

But he’s not treading water in the meantime. Since buying the company from lighting giant Philips three years ago, Jensen has overseen $7 million worth of new equipment purchases and upgrades to the plant.

New, state-of-the-art milling machines were just added to the machine shop and a richly appointed conference room now greets visitors. Jensen likes to stand just outside the new, glass-enclosed “clean room,” a hygienic room where researchers design and test products for the medical industry.

“You get a sense of what we’re trying to do with the business,” said Jensen, observing his staff huddled around a computer screen in the clean room. “We’re growing from a factory to a high-technology industry. This makes me happy.”

He’s already planning for growth and reinvesting the gains from this year’s profit. The 240,000-square-foot plant has been rearranged to enhance efficiency for its lighting products and to clear a swath of space for new equipment for future products. Elmet has the capacity to research, design and manufacture products on-site using its two primary metals: tungsten and molybdenum. Both metals are extremely strong with high melting points. Although the metals are difficult to work with, Elmet has an experienced staff, which Jensen considers an enormous asset and competitive advantage.

His employees are a key reason he went with Harbor to finance the move to a publicly traded company. Having grown up as one of six kids whose dad worked in Portland as a cop, Jensen has a strong affinity for the working man. He, too, started on a factory floor, before rising to the executive suite with Philips.

“I’ve walked in everyone’s shoes,” he said with a smile. “The factory workers’, the owner of the business and everybody in between.”

There’s pride in his voice as he mentions that Elmet pays 100 percent of employees’ health insurance premiums and offers a pension plan for hourly employees. He hasn’t had trouble hiring new employees, in part because of wages and benefits package. He and the local Teamsters union, which represents his hourly employees, negotiated a new contract that ensure benefits into 2013.

“Clearly we are committed to staying in Lewiston,” Jensen said. “I feel an obligation to the employees to make us as successful as we can be and keep the jobs here.”