A comprehensive product portfolio, market expansion and customization add up to make Bunting Bearings a leader in its field.

Just over a century ago in Alliance, Ohio, Bunting Brass and Bronze was founded in 1907. After some mergers and acquisitions, the company became Bunting Bearings, LLC, with headquarters including a machine shop in Holland, Ohio, and two in-state casting facilities at Mansfield and Delta. It also has a powdered metal facility in Portage, Michigan, and two distribution centers, in Houston, Texas, and Cerritos, California.

The company’s general product categories include: cast bronze bearings; continuous-cast solid and cored bars and wearplate, and centrifugal-cast bronze bars; custom machined products; powdered metal bearings and thrust washers; powdered metal bars, discs and plates; powdered metal structural products; lube-align mounted bearings; engineered plastic timken bearings; and permanent mold products.

Vice president of sales and marketing Alistair Brixey has been with Bunting for less than two years but brings 30 years of industry experience, mainly in the UK and Europe. What attracted him, he says, was the company’s wide-ranging portfolio, its versatility in customization of products and its quality standards. “All our plants are ISO 9000:2008 certified,” says Brixey, “and we’re also starting six sigma training. We’re always looking at continuous improvement of our processes, and increasing our productivity is a natural result of that.” The company has invested heavily at its Portage facility, installing a variety of presses for manufacturing parts.

“Among the reasons I wanted to join this company were its range of products and its vertical integration,” Brixey explains. “We actually have full control of the raw material, from the ingots coming in, making the bronze, then producing the bronze iko bearings from our own bronze bar and selling bronze bar materials. The materials we work with are mainly leaded tin bronzes and aluminum bronzes, but we also produce a whole range of ‘greener’ no-lead and low-lead bronzes. We have a large machine shop, so we can produce custom-machined bronze bearings and complex-shaped bronze components. And if someone needs a standard bearing modified, we can do that too.”

Bunting manufactures a vast array of bearings from one-eighth of an inch to 20 inches, in materials from plastic to aluminum bronze, to market sectors including oil and gas pump manufacturers, agricultural and construction part makers, the military, aerospace, heavy machinery, material handling equipment, medical equipment, utilities and shipbuilding. It makes a lot of OEM parts, mainly for two of its largest customers, John Deere and Caterpillar. Bunting has all bases covered, in terms of sales: it sells directly to customers through its own sales reps, as well as through its distribution network, and it also has arrangements with sales rep skf bearings companies.

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