For The State Journal

Despite the recession, Star Technologies LLC continues to manufacture and sell a broad array of metal fasteners to GE Aviation and other customers in the transportation industry.

The Huntington plant, located in the 2400 block of Fourth Avenue, produced 3.5 million parts last year, said managing partner Rick Houvouras.

"That's by no means our best year ever but nevertheless a figure we're very pleased with," Houvouras said. "We were on track to have a record year in 2008 until the last two months of the year, when the bottom fell out of everything. Then it took a while to build things back in 2009."

In recent months, Star Technologies has not only expanded its business with GE, a world leader in the manufacture of jet engines, but it also added a major new customer: New Flyer, a manufacturer of heavy-duty transit buses in the United States and Canada.

Star Technologies, which currently has 14 full-time employees plus two part-time workers, manufactures precision clamping devices, brackets and metal stampings used in the transportation industry, as well as for commercial heating and cooling systems.

"We manufacture 200 different designs for GE," Houvouras said.

The parts are fashioned from a variety of metals, including aluminum, titanium, stainless steel and Inconel, a nickel-chromium alloy that has high corrosion resistance at high temperatures. To produce its parts, the company uses laser systems and advanced water-jet technology.

Star Technologies was founded in 1994, when Houvouras and a group of other local investors saw an opportunity to create jobs and make money when a longtime Huntington fastener maker shuttered its operations.

Founded in 1938, Adel Precision Products Corp. played an important role in World War II, when America's output of warplanes dramatically multiplied almost overnight. Workers at Adel's West Huntington plant worked night and day to meet the demand for the company's aviation fasteners. But the company had its ups and downs in the post-war era.

In the early 1990s, a California-based company bought Adel, closed its Huntington plant and moved the jobs to the West Coast. That left many of Adel's veteran employees jobless. Some had never worked anywhere other than the fastener plant.

Enter Houvouras and other local investors to team up and raise $800,000 to start Star Technologies.

The new venture began operation by hiring a half-dozen former Adel employees -- and pledging to them that, once the company reached a required level of profitability, they could become partners in it.

"We now have seven working partners, including four who have been with us since we began," Houvouras said.

The company sells and ships parts to customers nationwide and abroad, including buyers in Mexico, Canada, the United Kingdom and even such seemingly unlikely countries as Poland and Malaysia.

"We have no clients in West Virginia," Houvouras said.

A former member of the West Virginia House of Delegates, Houvouras is quick to credit state government for lending the company a helping hand, especially when it was getting started.

"The state," he said, "has helped by providing low-interest loans and work force training grants."

Houvouras also credited the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing for its assistance.

"RCBI not only allowed us to use some machines that we wouldn't otherwise have had access to but provided training for our employees to help them use the latest technology," he said.

And, too, RCBI helped the company obtain the quality certifications required by major companies such as GE.

"Quality control is the foundation by which we operate," Houvouras said. "Our philosophy is a total commitment to quality and continuous quality improvement. This philosophy has been instilled in every employee at Star through training and involvement within our quality system."

Writer James E. Casto is on the staff at the Robert C. Byrd Institute for Advanced Flexible Manufacturing.