AUBURN – A division of Enefco International, a Minot Avenue manufacturer, got a shot in the arm this week when it received its largest order ever for its patented cleaning cards.

“The product is selling well,” said Peter Klein, CEO. “We’re running a night shift at the moment to keep up with the cleaning card (orders).”

Enefco, the parent company of KIC Products, makes about 500,000 cleaning cards a week, used to clean the innards of machines that accept cash or credit cards. The company pioneered a waffle technology that allows the surface of the card to expand and contract to reach the nooks and crannies of the mechanism that reads money or the swipe stripe of credit cards.

This week it shipped its largest order ever to the Canadian government for cleaning casino machines in Alberta. Klein declined to say exactly how many cards will be shipped over the two-year contract, but he did say he expected to see continued growth for that product.

“We saw 30 percent growth in ’06 over ’05 and we expect that growth to continue this year,” he said.

The company began marketing the cleaning card in earnest about six weeks ago. Klein said growing concern over the build up of electrostatic charges in machines that accept credit cards is a marketing opportunity for Enefco.

“Coating the devices with the solution from the cards prohibits the build up of electrostatic charges,” he said.

The discharges are especially bad in low-humidity climates and in machines that are used heavily by credit cards with holographic magnetic stripes, which conduct more electrostatic charges than conventional cards.

Klein said the discharges can lead to premature machine failures.

– Carol Coultas