NASHUA – After more than a half-century making rolled products in Nashua, including decades during which its factory was attached to the owners’ home and the smell of pies baking in the kitchen sometimes wafted into manufacturing areas, Nim-Cor has moved away.

The factory, located behind Best Ford on Amherst Street, is virtually empty and is for sale. Operations have consolidated in Neenah, Wis., home of Nim-Cor’s parent company, Webex Inc.

A Nim-Cor spokesman declined to discuss the decision with The Telegraph. In a statement released earlier this year, Webex CEO Gary Edwards said the consolidation was made “to grow and enhance the product offering.”

The name Nim-Cor, sometimes spelled without the dash, was derived from a predecessor company, Nashua Industrial Machine Co.

The firm makes air shafts, tubes and cylinders from metal and rolled carbon fiber for customers worldwide.

Its roots date back to 1952, when it was the U.S. division of British-owned W.P. Evans, which made equipment for the paper industry.

When W.P. Evans came here, the firm bought a two-floor Cape with a circular driveway, as base of their operations, and never left the property.

The founding happened when Amherst Street, out near the city line, was two lanes wide and much more rural.

In a 2002 story in The Telegraph, former employee Marjorie Lovejoy recalled: “When I first started, there were just cows and trees out here. You could sit out there by the road for 15 minutes and never see a car go by.”

That story featured former employees recalling the smell and taste of blueberry pies baked by Irene Smith, wife of one company owner.

In the 1960s, representatives of Nashua Industrial Machine Co. Inc. came to W.P. Evans with an idea for making air shafts, which eventually became Nim-Cor’s main product.

The company saw several British corporate owners over the next few decades. In 1999, it was bought by American investor Edgar Smith, who owned Webex, and Alastair Millns, who became Nim-Cor’s president. They expanded the factory to 47,000 square feet and sold off the front portion of the parcel.

That was when the old house was torn down as part of the construction of Best Ford – to the dismay of some, but not all, who worked there.

“Many of the employees feel nostalgic about it, but I’ll tell you that the house was the most abominable thing. We had most of the company in the main building, and then, administration in this house. I still remember wading through snow to get from the house to the plant,” Millns told The Telegraph in 2002. “It didn’t make any sense for operational efficiency.”

David Brooks can be reached at 594-6531 or dbrooks@nashuatelegraph.com. Also, follow Brooks on Twitter (@GraniteGeek).