Global Fastener News

March 24, 1986 FIN – The Aluminum Company of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, has signed a letter of intent to sell its Precision Products Division (formerly the Fastener Division) in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to Clendenin Bros. Inc.
Clendenin Bros. of Baltimore, Maryland, is a producer of aluminum, brass and copper sheets, nails, rivets, tacks, washers, machine screws and wood screws.

Alcoa is doing a sort of corporate dance of the seven veils, and peeling off its fabricating units one by one. It also recently sold its Rea Magnet Wire group in Fort Wayne, Indiana, Algonquin Industries Inc. in Guilford, Connecticut (which also makes magnet wire), PEP Industries Inc. in Nashville, Tennessee (which makes auto wire harnesses) and Dixie Wire Co., also in Nashville, which supplies wires for the harnesses made by PEP Industries.

The Lancaster fastener people have not been as visible in the fastener industry since Alcoa dropped out of the National Fasteners Distributors Association.

The Fastener Division (which we will continue to call it rather that its new moniker of Precision Products Division) was established in Lancaster, in the heart of the Amish community, in 1953.

Before Alcoa set up all its fastener activities under a single roof as a single operating corporate profit center the company produced threaded fasteners, screw machine and cold formed products at its Edgewater, New Jersey plant (closed many years ago) and rivet production was handled in its Vernon, California facility.

We won’t vouch for the complete veracity of the following but we believe that Alcoa actually conducts two businesses out of the Lancaster facility. One is the Precision Products Division, which produces standard fasteners, aerospace rivets, automatic screw machine rivets parts and cold formed parts and specialty fasteners.

Bill Kopetz is general manager of the Lancaster facility.

The other group is the Metals Closure Division which produces aluminum beverage closers. Tim Leveque is general manager of that Division, headquartered in Richmond, Indiana. Both Bill and Tim report to George Bergeron, president of Closure Systems International (CSI) in Richmond, Indiana.

According to FIN’s latest records, there are about 160 employees, salaried and hourly, at the Lancaster facility. Since what Clendenin proposes to buy is the assets of the Alcoa group it would not surprise us if all or part of the operations now at Lancaster were relocated at some future date. ©1986/2011 Fastener Industry News