A little-known fact demonstrates the importance of manufacturing to Butler County’s success.

Of the 67 counties that make up Pennsylvania, Butler County has the highest number of manufacturers, at more than 300, according to the Tri County Manufacturers Consortium.

“A lot of it has to do with our history,” said Mark Gordon, county chief of economic development and planning. “Early on, we had Armco and Pullman Standard, and a lot of railroad access, which was always indicative of manufacturing to transport goods and services.”

Gordon said pockets of manufacturing exist all over the county, including along Breakneck Creek in Mars and Adams Township, the Victory Road Business Park in Clinton Township and Pullman Business Park in Butler, to name a few.

The Petrolia area in northern Butler County hosts multiple chemical manufacturers, and even farther north, factories crank out prebuilt homes.

Gordon said there is a simple reason for the importance of manufacturing to a community.

“Let’s face it, our economy is based on people who make things,” he said. “It’s pretty hard to run the economies of a country just on a service economy.”

Gordon said no one can take away the county’s status as creator and initial manufacturer of the Bantam Jeep, which helped win World War II, or the essential electrical steel manufactured at Cleveland-Cliffs — formerly Armco and AK Steel — in Butler Township.

“That is what is used across our nation for the power grid,” Gordon said.

He said manufacturing normally provides living-wage jobs, which have been filled by county workers for generations.

Those workers then spend money in the community, which supports the overall economy.

“It is the multiplier,” Gordon said.

One challenge faced by manufacturers today is a worker shortage, which has spurred the county to focus on workforce development.

He said the county is partnering with school districts and engaging with trade unions to help provide workers for manufacturers.

The Steamfitters Technology Center in Jackson Township provides classes and ongoing education, which means qualified workers for the county’s manufacturers.

“We try to develop the the jobs that provide excellent skills so people can stay right here and find meaningful work that pays excellent wages,” Gordon said.

A newer company based in Pullman Business Park boasts a unique business model.

GaDova Manufacturing CEO Fahad Alraddadi explained that companies come to his company with a problem or issue that needs solving.

“We give them solutions in three phases of design, which are electrical, mechanical and software,” Alraddadi said.

An example is the University of Pennsylvania, which approached GaDova looking to detect Alzheimer’s disease in the brain.

Alraddadi explained that dying brain cells produce an increasing amount of sodium.

The university was looking for an apparatus to monitor sodium in cells in a particular section of the brain. GaDova experts were able to provide the university with the apparatus, Alraddadi said.

In another project involved a railway company that wanted to eliminate noise in a communication system with their trains. GaDova designed an automated control system that communicates via the train tracks. That information is used to transfer signals from one car to another, Alraddadi said.

He said he and GaDova COO William Monski chose Butler because the community is economically cost effective, has lower taxes, reasonable labor costs, and normally abundant talent for their needs with a three- to four-month training program.

“From a human resources standpoint and a financial standpoint, Butler is a good place to be,” Alraddadi said.

He said the 4-month-old company now employs five people, and he hopes to increase that number to 15 by the end of the year.

“We love being here,” Alraddadi said. “We look forward to being in Butler for many, many years to come.”

Another innovative manufacturer in Butler is M2Additive, a Main Street business owned by Michael Paul, 26.

Paul defines his company as prototyping services and small-scale part manufacturer for companies and consumers.

Paul said M2Additive can use a 3D printer or other apparatus to create everything from medical components, parts for presentations and items for chemical companies to trinkets or Christmas ornaments for customers.

“Pretty much anything anybody wants made, we can virtually do that,” he said.

Paul’s fascination with 3D printing began in 2006, and he started the digital fabrication lab at Butler County Community College in 2014 with another student.

While he was attending classes at BC3, school officials tapped Paul to operate their laser cutter.

“The digital fabrication lab kind of grew from there,” Paul said.

After BC3, Paul transferred to Pennsylvania State University Behrend in Erie, where he turned a little-used 3D printing room into a lab for prototyping and product development.

“It’s now the Innovation Commons at Penn State Behrend,” Paul said.

Paul has helped more than 200 entrepreneurs and holds seven patents.

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, Paul moved from Erie back to his hometown of Butler to set up a prototype manufacturer on the second floor of his father’s store, Don Paul Jewelers.

“There is a lot of untapped potential for this type of process we’re doing,” Paul said. “Erie is pretty saturated with this stuff.”

When supply chain issues hit his and other businesses as a result of the pandemic, Paul began making the parts he and others were waiting weeks and months to get.

Some components can be produced in as little as 24 hours at M2Additive, while others can be reverse engineered and produced in a slightly more involved process.

“We were able to use the supply chain issues as an advantage to our business,” Paul said.

Of the 300-plus manufacturers in the county, one area boasts 27 alone.

Saxonburg and the surrounding area is a major hub of manufacturers large and small.

Tom Arbanas, president at Du-Co Ceramics in Saxonburg, and Jim Mahan, executive vice president at Penn United Technologies in Jefferson Township, hearken back to the borough’s origins as a possible reason so many manufacturers landed in Saxonburg.

“John Roebling invented wire rope and was very mechanical minded,” Arbanas said. “I’ve seen a lot of mechanical minded people in this area.”

“Maybe that German ingenuity and mindset of hard work and smart thinking just stayed in the area,” Mahan offered.

Arbanas also pointed to the late Reldon Cooper, a bastion of Saxonburg who started Du-Co Ceramics in a small slaughterhouse on the current property in 1949 with business partner John Duke.

“Reldon built many of the machines for Du-Co and many are still in operation,” Arbanas said. “Maybe what he started spilled over into what we have today, because we have a lot of technical people setting up different presses and machines, and they’re very mechanical.”

Far from that small slaughterhouse, Du-Co Ceramics in Saxonburg now boasts150,000 square feet of manufacturing space and 150 employees.

“We ship about one million parts per day at this facility,” Arbanas said. “We have some technical ceramic components orbiting the Earth right now.”

He explained that Du-Co ceramic parts are in the Hubble telescope, nuclear submarines, water filtration products and sensors on wind turbines.

Mahan said one challenge being faced by Penn United Technologies and many other manufacturers in the current market is a lack of workers.

“We all have the same problem now,” Mahan said. “We can’t get enough employees.”

Penn United has raised wages, added benefits and worked with Lenape and Butler Area Vocational-Technical schools to find new employees.

“We do hire a lot of those young people,” Mahan said of the vo-tech schools.

Penn United has provided high-precision manufacturing solutions in dozens of different markets since 1971.

Gordon is thrilled to oversee development in the top manufacturing county in Pennsylvania.

“My hat is off to all those businesses that make things for the contributions they bring,” Gordon said.

Jacob Lassinger, a sales associate at Associated Ceramics in Sarver explained there is a lot of give and take between manufacturing businesses in the area.

“You typically could have several businesses spawn off of one that comes into the area,” Lassinger said. “The industries around are pretty similar. They all kind of have to work together for the most part. We do work for them, then they do some work for us.”

Associated Ceramics is technical ceramic component manufacturer that uses diamond machining tools to provide the highest quality ceramics in the marketplace.

Finding employees still proves challenging for Associated Ceramics, Lassinger explained, for positions such as machine operators, quality inspectors and general laborers.

“We do a lot of onsite training,” Lassinger said. “It does not require up front skill, it’s just getting people through the doors.”

This article was published in the July edition of Butler County Business Matters.