JEFFERSON TOWNSHIP — Thirty-seven-year employee-owner of Penn United Technologies Incorporated Bill Kriley drives 45 minutes to his job.

When he started, the job was much closer to home. Now, he chooses to make the commute. He feels like he has been growing with the company.

Penn United celebrated its 55th year of operation in May and invited its employees to a meal on its Saxonburg lawn on Tuesday, June 16, and on its main Cabot campus lawn Wednesday, June 17.

The machine manufacturing company, which was founded on May 4, 1971, by Carl Jones, Charles Barton and Robert Becker as a small tool and die shop, offers manufacturing services in medical, automotive, electronics and telecommunications, energy, oil and gas, fluid handling, defense and aerospace, as well as other markets that require precision components.

The company is an employee stock ownership plan, meaning that employees own shares in the company and get an additional percentage on top of their pay. It has almost 700 employee-owners.

The employee stock ownership plan “is very good for retirement,” 31-year employee-owner Dan Hortert said.

The profit-sharing model gives the employee-owner a feeling they are doing something for themselves and the company, high-volume, low-volume grinding team leader Keith Kirkwood said.

The team atmosphere “gets work done.”

The benefits aren’t the only things that keep employee-owners coming back to work.

“Penn United’s family-oriented,” carbide precision tool and grinding shop team leader Chris Singer said.

Every time the company has a record shipment month or year, Singer said, “the board of directors likes to pay that back to employees anywhere possible.”

The company recognized its highest shipments in revenue in the history of the company this past March, according to Phillips.

Each of the company’s three main divisions — tooling and component, production services and carbide services — celebrated record-breaking years.

The luncheon was meant to uplift the employee-owners, saying thank you for all of the hard work.

“Without the people doing it, we wouldn’t get there,” Phillips said.

Singer was recruited to the company in June 2000 through Butler High School’s vocational technical program. He completed Penn United’s apprenticeship program and has been with the company ever since.

The apprenticeship program pays students to learn manufacturing skills through its 17,000 square-foot Learning Institute for the Growth of High Technology training center, offering alternative routes to a traditional, and sometimes costly, college education and promoting manufacturing as a meaningful career choice, Penn United president Bill Jones said.

Penn United leadership said the company aims to give back to Butler County as much as it can, even choosing to cater with local businesses.

The company is one of the largest contributors to UPMC Children’s Hospital Free Care Fund, according to Jones. It also donates to the Salvation Army and Samaritan’s Purse.

According to the Federal Reserve Bank of Saint Louis, the manufacturing industry in Pennsylvania made more than $111 million by quarter four of 2025.

The industry as a whole employs over 578,000 people in Pennsylvania, representing about one out of every 11 jobs in the state, according to the Pennsylvania Manufacturing Extension Partnership.

Jones cited Elon Musk turning 4,000 people into millionaires.

“We’re creating millionaires as well,” he said.

If employee-owners stay with the organization for about 30 years, they can regularly “leave with balances above that,” he said.