Wednesday, July 4, 2001

By MARCIA BLOMBERG

WEST SPRINGFIELD      Atlantic Fasteners, a distributor of nuts, bolts, screws and other fasteners, purchased a Connecticut fastener company yesterday.

The purchase of Newington-based Fasteners Inc., which specializes in engineered and custom fasteners, complements Atlantic Fasteners' business and will result in a company with a combined $13 million in annual sales, according to Tony Peterson, vice president of marketing.

Peterson declined to disclose cost of the acquisition.

In a statement, Atlantic Fasteners President Patrick J. O'Toole said "we pursued Fasteners Inc. for over eight years and two owners, because of its sterling reputation and high-quality product mix that complements ours."

Peterson said, "We don't really compete . . . and that's why we were seeking them for so long."

Atlantic Fasteners bought Fasteners Inc. from Robert Schaller, who bought it three years ago from a veteran owner.

The deal does not include real estate.

Fasteners Inc. holds near-exclusive rights to distribute some brands and also has a large business distributing fasteners made to customers' specifications, Peterson said.

Fasteners Inc. has twice been named to Industrial Distribution magazine's list of the top 50 small industrial distributors.

Atlantic Fasteners, at 49 Heywood Ave., is a 20-year-old company employing 51. Fasteners Inc. is 39 years old and employs 12.

Peterson said no layoffs will result from the acquisition.

"They run a nice, lean company and they have very good people, so it's not something we want to tamper with," he said.

Fasteners Inc. has a modern, 16,000-square-foot facility that can help with warehousing inventory, Peterson said. The Heywood Avenue plant here, which also has about 16,000 square feet, is running out of room, he said.

One reason for that, he said, is robust growth. Atlantic's sales were up 19 percent last year, and 8.3 percent so far this year, Peterson said.

Atlantic Fasteners sells screws and other fasteners to industrial users and wholesale accounts, he said.

"Many industrial accounts have hundreds of varieties of fasteners they use in either maintenance of their equipment, or their end product," he said.

Atlantic Fasteners specializes in bar-code inventory control programs, sending inventory-control managers with bar-code wands and laptop computers to customers to check their inventory of fasteners, and order more via bar code and computer when supplies are running low.

Atlantic also uses bar-code scanning to pick items required to fill an order. It's a system that frees customers from inventory chores and reduce the chance of human error.

Peterson said that of 197,000 lines   —   a line is a quantity of one kind of fastener ordered by a customer   —   sent out last year, the company made only 24 errors in all four processes: picking, packing, shipping and receiving.

© 2001 UNION-NEWS. Used with permission.