Carmen Palmieri founded our company in  1946, in his basement with no money and a strong desire to work. The  first aluminum castings he made were tiny Italian cookie irons. He was then approached to making sinker molds, after some time making  these for others; he decided to create a whole line of molds with his  name being the brand. Unfortunately, at that time in history, trying  to sell products under an ethnic name was difficult. The name was Americanized to C. Palmer Manufacturing, Inc.

As  the business continued to grow the product line became much  larger. In the late fifties, the business was too large for the  basement to handle, so Carmen and his first son John, built the company's first plant. John was fresh out of the Navy and  anxious to help his father. Being in electronics in the Navy, he had  several new and innovative ideas for products, as well as plant  automation. The company came out with the first electric Pizzelle  Iron as well as the Palmer Sandwich Toaster.

Sales were booming and  it did not take long to outgrow the existing plant, so again it was  time to expand and land was bought, and in 1964 a new plant was built  with more than enough room, or so they thought. John designed and  implemented a fully automated sand casting system. Many companies  revered the system. A national electronics manufacture sent a few of  their engineers to observe the system. They were impressed and amazed  that such a small company could have so much automation while not  having the resources of a larger conglomerate. They asked to use some  of the ideas that John had implemented, the request was honored. 

Seeing an easier way, in 1976, the company bought their first  aluminum die cast machine adding a vast improvement in quality of the  product and the secondary operations were decreased. In the late  70's, it was decided to add our own Tool and Die department. This has  been one of our greatest assets. We offer the service of building our  customers' dies at minimal charge. This is like making an offer that  cannot be refused, as the cost savings are in the thousands.

 In 1979, Carmen  decide to retire, fortunately for us he forgot to stop coming to work  and up to the age of 96 he kept his 7:00-3:30 work regime.

Again the  company was growing so expansion was necessary, and in 1980 an  addition was built and another in 1982. In 1984, Philip, John's first  son joined the company and began to bring the company into the  computer age. The sand casting part of the company was phased out and  converted over to die castings.

In the late 90's, still growing by  leaps and bounds, and with two of our largest customers having  expressed that their current level of purchases increasing for the  next season by 40% to 100%; we again found it necessary for expansion and a second division, C. Palmer Diecasting, Inc. was opened in Oakland, Maryland.