Nuts bolts operation

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It’s what the Mahwah-based firm has been doing for 45 years as a maker of industrial bolting tools, using engineers to design its product lines and custom equipment for clients such as power plants and refineries.

“It’s something that not everybody is aware of or thinks about, but bolts and nuts are everywhere,” said Jason Junkers, Hytorc’s director of marketing and the son of company founder John Junkers. “Everything is held together with them.”

The company, which has about 75 employees in New Jersey, spent its first 35 years building and refining hydraulic-fueled torque wrenches, Junkers said. Around 2008, it began to offer air-powered tools born from five years of research and development.

But Hytorc is now ready to take another step, with plans to introduce high-profile, high-impact new products such as an electric bolting gun, Junkers said. The company expects to start producing its first lineup of the new equipment early next year, offering a tool that he said will be more portable and convenient for bolting.

With its products constantly evolving, a key to Hytorc’s success through the years has been the group of independent salespeople who peddle the bolting products. Junkers said there are hundreds around the world selling not only the company’s most popular tools, but also custom solutions that might be required in settings such as wind farms.

That’s one major reason the Hytorc team in New Jersey includes about 15 engineers, who are often tapped to collaborate with engineers who work for their buyers.

As the independent salespeople go, the company is not looking for anyone interested in a 9 to 5 job, Junkers said. Rather, Hytorc wants the ambitious, entrepreneurial types who are “are willing to dedicate their life to this” and learn the products cold.

“If you’re working with a power plant or refinery (where) they’re tightening a reactor, and something goes wrong in the middle of the night, they need to call somebody and have that person there,” he said. “So it’s pretty important that the person is dedicated enough and really treats it as their own business.”

It was a North Jersey-based salesman who took Hytorc to the top — at least, to the top of the tallest building in the country.

About two years ago, planners with the One World Trade Center project tapped New York metropolitan-area representative Reid Hensen to provide a bolting system for the tower’s 408-foot spire and its 14 communication rings.