By Jennifer Theurer

Otis, Kansas, population 280, is home to one of the Messer Group’s industrial gas plants. This particular plant, one of many within Messer, is notable because it produces the helium used to inflate the famous balloons for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

According to Lisa Gutierrez of The Kansas City Star, more than 30 balloons will take flight Thursday morning filled with helium produced in the state most well-known for growing wheat.

The Otis plant extracts crude helium from natural gas, cools it, compresses it, refines it, and liquifies it before driving it to another Messer facility in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. The Bethlehem plant converts the liquid helium to gas before it is driven on to New York City.

The amount of helium Messer supplies to the parade varies from year to year depending on the number of balloons in the lineup and their size. Messer estimates the parade uses about 300,000 cubic feet of helium, roughly the amount needed to fill a half-million standard-size party balloons.

Macy’s is one of the Otis plant’s larger customers, but not the largest. “The MRI segment is one of our largest customers,” D.J. Henderson, zone production manager for the facility, said. “Liquid helium is supplied to super-cool MRI magnets.”

News tends to travel fast in small towns, but Scott Jecha, maintenance supervisor at the Otis plant, says most residents of this Rush County city don’t know about the plant’s ties to the Big Apple.

“Even most of the people in our county wouldn’t know it unless we’ve talked to them,” he said. “It’s just a small community, but they really have no clue what we do out here or what we do with (the helium).”