Growing Butech Bliss will add 20 workers

By Don Shilling

The deal will allow the Salem company to send less work to outside contractors.

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

SALEM — Butech Bliss is continuing its rapid growth by moving into the former Sekely Industries plant and adding 20 workers.

Butech Bliss will use the Pennsylvania Avenue plant to expand its capacity for machining parts and building equipment, said Chuck Jackson, vice president of operations.

Sekely Industries closed its tool and die operation last year. It employed about 110 people. The Sekely family still owned the building and sold it at an undisclosed price.

Butech Bliss builds equipment for steel mills and other metal processing factories. Adding another plant will allow the company to reduce the amount of work it is sending to outside contractors, Jackson said.

The company sent about $8 million worth of work to contractors in the first half of this year because it didn’t have the manufacturing space, he said.

The company is seeking 20 experienced machinists and programmers to increase its production.

Jackson said Butech Bliss is growing because metal processors are expanding their operations.

“The metals industry has been on a good run in recent years and has been profitable, so they are spending money,” he said.

Butech Bliss employs 275, including more than 50 engineers.

It sells equipment to factories in 55 countries. The company said exports have been aided by the falling value of the dollar on world currency markets.

John Buta started the company in 1988 in the former Salem Tool building on South Ellsworth Avenue, which the company still uses. In 1999, he bought the former Bliss Salem factory on the same street and then acquired Bliss Salem’s intellectual property in 2005.

Butech Bliss also has acquired three other companies in recent years that produce extrusion presses and related parts, including Lombard in Warren. Those operations are in the process of being relocated to Salem.

shilling@vindy.com