In early March, IMT Corp. announced the acquisition of H&S Heat Treating (H&S) and its sister company, Nitrex Metal Technologies Inc. (NMT), both of southern Ontario, Canada. H&S offers a full complement of heat-treating services, and NMT offers a unique continuous nitriding process and is world renowned for utilizing the Nitreg® controlled gas nitriding and Nitreg®-C technology. Both facilities will continue to be run by current management. IMT, which is based in Cambridge, Ontario, has several manufacturing facilities across North America. Its capabilities include closed-die forging, machining, painting, assembly, press forging and upset forging.

                Industrial Heating recently spoke with Dave Orosz, president of Nitrex Metal Technologies, about the transaction and what it means for the parties involved. Orosz also briefly discussed the history of H&S and NMT. He was quick to point out that this acquisition will in no way affect either company’s membership in the Metal Treating Institute.

First off, can you provide some background on H&S and NMT?

In 1990, H&S partnered with Nitrex Metal Inc. (NMI) to form NMT to promote NMI’s technology in Canada and the U.S. as a commercial nitriding operation. NMT grew over the years and ended up with multiple locations. At some point, the companies decided to go their separate ways. H&S and NMT bought out NMI’s interest bought out our interest in the Canadian operations, and NMI bought out our interest in the U.S. operations. NMT then became a licensee using NMI’s technology. We maintain a close working relationship with NMI but haven’t been partners in many years. H&S became the owners of NMT 100%, and we promote the businesses as sister companies.

How will the acquisition affect the way H&S and NMT do business?

It’s not going to affect the way we do business at the line level. IMT, which was a key account of H&S, required more depth and expertise in heat treating. That’s what we bring to the table. Going forward, H&S and NMT will have more opportunities to exploit our respective areas of expertise.

Were you approached by IMT, or were you looking for a buyer?

We weren’t motivated sellers. We’ve been a family business for over 40 years. We had done a good job of reinventing our commercial operation (H&S) after some tough times in 2008-09.

                But IMT is a $200 million company, and they approached us with a good long-term strategy and some aggressive plans for the next 10 years. It made sense for them to talk to us. At the end of the day, it made sense for us to listen.

How will IMT be utilizing H&S and NMT?

H&S already was a key account of IMT, and there’s some opportunity for NMT within the IMT family. A portion of NMT’s businesses is die-life and tooling improvement. IMT has several forging companies, and we can help them extend their tooling life by nitriding their dies, punches and inserts.

How is this acquisition going to help H&S and NMT?

IMT is 10 times our size, so it brings infrastructure. More importantly, it gives us the ability to tackle multiple investments and allows us to pursue multiple projects at one time. We should see some good business opportunities as a direct result of this deal.