With customers like Del Monte, Seneca Foods and Chicken of the Sea canning like crazy, Minden-based American International Tooling Inc. isn’t worried about business flattening out any time soon. To be sure, growth has forced the company to relocate from a 4,000-square-foot leased facility in Carson City to a newly purchased 10,000-square-foot plant on Business Parkway in Minden.

As an independent manufacturer with the latest CAD technology in house, the engineering department of AIT works directly with customers in designing custom tooling products to fit specific needs.

Pressure is on

The company sells unique tooling — comprised of “chucks and rolls” — that seam lids to cans. Food processors the world over need this tooling device before sending canned fruits, vegetables and meats to market. “There’s no soldering — just vacuum and pressure,” explains Lee Bertucci, president of AIT.

By automating the manufacturing process, focusing on quality control, adding machinery and bringing sales in house, the seven-employee firm doubled sales in a three-year period. Previously, 80 percent of sales were through distributors, diluting profitability, says owner Bertucci. Still, “we wear many hats here,” he says of employees who have the “right mindset” to get the job done and keep customers happy.

“I hire for attitude,” says Bertucci, who worked for nearly 20 years in accounting for IBM in San Jose. “What you want are very motivated people who are accountable and have a high degree of ownership. I’m not a micromanager, so this is beneficial to them and the business,” Bertucci says. The payoff: revenue was up nearly 20 percent last year.

Short shelf life

In most cases, “The tooling lasts a season,” Bertucci says, talking about the wear and tear that occurs after the ten millionth can of peaches is seamed. “Most of it is stainless steel metal,” says Bertucci, who faced a bit of challenge last year when prices went from $1.85 to $2.50 per pound for formed rolled steel. “Most of it was going to China,” says Bertucci. He hit the phones, started building inventory through the year, and prices eventually came down.

While Bertucci’s accounting background has given him a leg up, he comes from a family where his dad and brother both worked in the canning industry. They encouraged him to join a family venture a decade ago when he and his family tired of the congestion and hassles of living in California. “It was time for a change in lifestyle,” Bertucci says, recalling 12-hour workdays that included “monstrous” commutes. “Now I live ten minutes away from work,” Bertucci says.

Ironically, the lion’s share of the customer base is in California. Indeed, “we don’t have one customer in Nevada.There are no food processors here that [currently] need our product,” Bertucci reveals. AIT also ships tooling to Mexico, South America, and has several customers in Canada and Samoa. The latter is where Chicken of the Sea and Star Kist have large manufacturing operations.

Although return business keeps the bottom line healthy, AIT is looking at focusing more on tooling for the beverage industry as well as producing ceramic tooling for commodities such as pumpkin products.

Five years out, Bertucci predicts “increasing customer counts, continuing quality and improving as much as we can.”

In other words, a can-do approach.