Industry Having A Ball
Skilled Labor Pool Plays Key Role In Abbott Ball Co. Success
West Hartford’s Abbott Ball Co. runs 24 hours a day to meet the demand, part of a thriving manufacturing wave.
WEST HARTFORD — A 109-year-old industrial ball-maker is riding Connecticut’s manufacturing wave, running 24 hours a day to meet demand for hundreds of products ranging from spark plugs to perfume bottles.
Abbott Ball Co. in West Hartford, operating in a brick factory dating to 1909, with machinery from the 1950s and ’70s, runs three shifts a day, five days a week, as it churns out 4 billion to 6 billion balls a year.
They’re used in pump sprays, the aerospace industry, military products, nail polish agitators — “anything you can imagine,” said Craig W. Bond, the company’s president.
Abbott is part of a small surge in manufacturing that is a hopeful sign for the Connecticut economy. Manufacturing jobs are expected to grow by 6.5 percent over the next eight years, according to the state Department of Labor.
The steel balls Abbott makes, initially stamped from wire, come in all sizes for use in many functions. Some are so tiny that an array resembles dust: They’re used in stents in vessels in the human body.
The automotive industry is Abbott Ball’s largest market, with Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co. receiving shipments every day.
Balls also are used in aerosol pumps,
feeders for chickens and gerbils, welding, electronics, automotive spark plugs that reduce emissions and fishing lures.
“We service so many different markets, it’s crazy,” Bond said.
Areas of the factory floor are also used to inspect balls to remove defects.
Privately held, Abbott Ball does not disclose financial details or what it pays its workers. Manufacturing jobs yield an average of nearly $82,000 a year in Connecticut, according to the state Department of Labor, and employers are scrambling to fill jobs created by strong demand in the aerospace and defense industries.
Abbott Ball, located in the Elmwood neighborhood, employs about 60 workers and another 30 or so at a subsidiary. Relying on attrition rather than layoffs, employment dropped from about 110 employees 15 to 20 years ago, Bond said.
Competition from China and India have “really taken a bite out of us,” he said. And the Great Recession “was a tricky one to handle.”
Abbott is a three-generation family business founded in 1909. Roger A.L. Bond, Craig Bond’s father who came to the company in 1985 as executive vice president, bought the company in 1991.
The elder Bond sold the company to his son in 2002, with two instructions, Craig Bond said: “Don’t lose money and don’t let anyone go.”
That’s not easy in Connecticut, where taxes and the cost of labor and energy are high. But by staying in the state, Abbott Ball can find the best workers.
“This is where the skilled labor is,” Bond said. “If you go to another state, they aren’t there.”
“One by one, every company I worked for went out of business or moved,” Roger Bond said. “Here, I saw the handwriting on the wall. That’s why I bought the business.”
Abbott Ball’s factory — hot in the summer, chilly in the winter, noisy at times and with floors coated with oil in places — isn’t the unspoiled workplace now common in computer-run operations.
“The kids you want are the ones who aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty,” said Craig Bond.
It’s the opposite of the scrubbed, digitally driven factories that manufacturers promote as they try to fill thousands of jobs by persuading skeptical youngsters and their parents that factory work is not what it used to be.
“With some of these mechanical processes, some people think of the cotton gin,” said Stephen LaPointe, director of the Manufacturing Technology Center at Quinebaug Valley Community College. “There’s no way to improve it.”
For example, smoke from heated oil makes a clean environment at manufacturers next to impossible, he said.
“They do the best to upgrade,” LaPointe said.
At the end of 2017, the state reported that manufacturing helped drive job growth. Connecticut employers added 6,000 jobs in December, up a fraction of 1 percent.
Manufacturing jobs, numbering 160,300 last year, were a bright spot. The industry’s gain of 4,100 jobs, or 2.5 percent, in 2017 was a first for Connecticut since 2010.
Business is “actually pretty good,” Craig Bond said, though steel tariffs imposed by President Donald Trump and retaliatory tariffs are driving up the price for metals.
“But it’s basically a family business that is doing well. We’re growing for the first time in a long time,” he said. “We are actually adding machines. We are adding people. Orders are increasing.”
“It has been interesting, to not lose money and keep everyone,” Bond said.