A New Castle, Pa., company performs the testing that ensures products meet safety standards, survive harsh travel conditions and withstand fluctuating temperatures.
Applus+ Keystone runs safety, electromagnetic, environmental and package testing on products across hundreds of industries.
Nic Ouimet, marketing coordinator at Applus+ Keystone, says the company conducts electromagnetic interference and electromagnetic compatibility testing to ensure products meet safety and industry standards.
“Any electronic that you are with or near, they all emit and take in radio frequencies,” he explains. “We make sure that the levels of emission and input are within safe limits so that they don’t harm other devices.”
In short, the tests ensure your radio won’t turn off when you heat up last night’s leftovers in the microwave.
“We make sure that those levels are safe within the required testing standards,” Ouimet says.
With operations in New Castle, Shenango Business Park and Durham, N.C., Keystone conducts regulatory compliance testing to ensure products and materials meet standards.
In one of the electronics testing chambers on a late February morning, employees were testing a product called an Author Clock, a device about the size of a bar of soap that tells time through literary quotes.
“We take the antenna, blast the invisible radio frequency waves at the unit and make sure that the unit doesn’t break or deteriorate,” Ouimet says.
Chambers for electronics testing are lined with materials that mute all radio frequencies inside and outside of the chamber. That ensures the antenna targets the unit being tested.
“Each chamber has a control room and basically this is where the engineers can monitor the testing while the testing is in progress,” Ouimet says. “They shut the door here and then they go to the control room to monitor the equipment.”
Many Industries
And testing goes beyond consumer products.
“We do hundreds of different industries,” the marketing coordinator says. “We do consumer to industrial to automotive. We’ve done work with large manufacturers like Tesla, GM …”
The U.S. military, Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, GE, Northrop Grumman and SpaceX are among other high-profile customers.
Keystone Compliance started in New Castle in 2007, moving to its North Columbus Innerbelt location in 2011. In November 2024, it was acquired by Applus+, a global company, based in Barcelona, Spain, becoming Applus+ Keystone. It’s part of the laboratories division which boasts seven labs across the U.S. Applus+, with roots dating to the mid-1990s, launched as a global brand in 2003.
Keystone employs 55 people and generates about $15 million in annual revenue.
Testing Types
One piece of machinery, an electrodynamic shaker with thermal capabilities, simulates vibration and temperature at the same time. The aerospace and railroad industries, where products sustain vibration and temperature fluctuations during travel, are among those in which it’s used.
Sometimes a customer observes the testing as it happens. But Keystone provides reports to the customers for all items tested, describing test results.
If a product doesn’t pass a test, the customer may take it back to their shop and fix it or make a new iteration of the product or a new product altogether.
Environmental product and material testing at Keystone involves assessing tolerance to different temperatures.
“We have dozens of different temperature chambers that simulate all the way from negative 110 to 205 degrees Celsius,” Ouimet adds. “So, these simulate the extreme highs and extreme lows of different temperatures for products that need to be sold or for products that are anywhere in the world.”
The U.S. military and medical companies comprise the largest percentages of Applus+ Keystone’s business at 20% each.
“Our general manager has done a phenomenal job at diversifying us though,” rather than centering 80-90% of the company’s business in one industry, Ouimet says.
Sam Mastovich is the company’s general manager. He lists resourcefulness, speed and customer experience as the company’s three key differentiators.
“First, resourcefulness is a big part of Keystone’s culture,” he says in an email. “The answer to ‘can we do it?’ is almost never ‘no.’ Whether it’s taking on challenging test programs, helping customers work through a test failure, improving efficiency through automation or turning around quotes and reports quickly, Keystone finds a way to deliver. Customers recognize that, and I think it’s one of the biggest reasons for the company’s continued growth.”
Keystone bought a building across the street in 2020 where employees perform product water simulation testing. The company also added onto its main building in 2024.
Mastovich also points to the company’s response time as a distinguishing characteristic.
“We know the faster a quote goes out, the better the chances of winning the work, and that’s something Keystone does very well through strong processes and automation,” he says.
And customer experience is the third differentiator.
“Keystone supports customers from start to finish, and that level of care really stands out,” according to Mastovich. “Not every lab does that, and very few do it at the level Keystone does.”
Testing for the military includes environmental assessments of backpacks for durability.
“We make sure that they don’t break or rip or get destroyed within the different temperatures, humidity, altitude,” Ouimet explains.
Equipment also enables Keystone employees to determine if a product meets its expected lifespan by simulating the passage of time.
“We can also do thermal shock testing, going from extreme highs to extreme lows within a matter of seconds,” he adds.
And he points to another chamber that looks like two, one atop the other. The top half is one temperature, and the bottom half is another. “So it can go from extreme heat to extreme cold within a few seconds.”
Other chambers test for salt fog endurance.
“Any product that you want to simulate high salt areas next to the sea or the ocean, we simulate those within these chambers,” the marketing coordinator continues.
Ingress Protection
Keystone also does ingress protection, or IP Code certification, testing which determines the protection level against solids and liquids including water, sand, dust and other fine particles. Technicians can simulate different types of water, spray water drops and perform immersion testing as well.
“That is definitely one of the larger capabilities that we can do,” Ouimet says.
A lot of the testing the company does, most people wouldn’t even think about. Keystone tests computer screens on the backs of airplane seats, for example, using liquids that a passenger might spill.
At its Shenango Business Park operation, it tests packages and packaging.
“An example for that was we’ve done testing for a cookie manufacturer, and we basically simulated compression, vibration, altitude and drop testing of the box,” Ouimet says. “And then we open the box and see how many cookies actually broke within that package.”
Keystone photographs the results, counts the number of damaged items and reports back to the manufacturer.
Many major retailers require package testing by companies with which they contract to cut down on replacement costs.
“If a product breaks while shipping via Amazon, then Amazon has to pay for that return shipment,” Ouimet says. “So, Amazon requires it to basically make sure that nothing breaks. To replace something, Amazon requires they actually do a charge back. So, for every package that breaks, they will have the manufacturer pay for the return.”
Pictured at top: Nic Ouimet, marketing coordinator at Applus+ Keystone, stands in front of an electrodynamic shaker at the company’s New Castle, Pa, operation.
