On a regular basis we have articles from “Josh Hale” and “Jessica Maier” of “International Search Partners” about hiring practices and salaries in the North American heat treatment industry. This article entitled “Do companies pay higher salaries in coastal areas or in bigger cities like in California vs. lower cost of living areas like the Midwest?” is sure to strike a chord amongst all captive and commercial heat treaters.
Once a quarter, Managing Recruiter, Josh Hale and/or Sr. Recruiter, Jessica Maier, will address questions that come up regularly from industry professionals (email questions for future editions to [email protected]). The most common questions that come up are about salaries, so for this first article of the year, Josh addresses the question:
Do companies pay higher salaries in coastal areas or in bigger cities like in California vs. lower cost of living areas like the Midwest?
In today’s hiring landscape, the traditional approach of adjusting salaries based on geographic cost of living is shifting. At International Search Partners, where we recruit for companies in various locations across North America, we frequently encounter candidates questioning whether their location impacts their earning potential. While at face value, it may seem like this is a significant factor (and to be fair, in the past it did carry more weight), data and empirical evidence suggest that geographic salary adjustments are becoming less pronounced than one might be prone to think.
These days, companies are increasingly adopting market-based compensation strategies, paying employees based on their skills, experience, and the job’s market demand rather than the local cost of living. This shift is particularly evident in sectors where competition for top talent is fierce (like heat treating). For instance, a furnace design engineer in Iowa may earn nearly as much as one in California if their skills align with market needs.
In 2023 Glassdoor conducted a study which highlighted this trend nationwide, noting that the finance, technology, and manufacturing sectors were the most common industries to see a convergence of salary ranges regardless of geography. Additionally, the Mercer 2022 Salary Benchmarking Survey revealed that salaries for most positions vary only by 7-10% across regions. This is a stark contrast to the 20-30% regional gaps seen a decade ago and parallels empirical data from ISP’s placement history.
Of course, the rise in remote work has influenced much of this cultural shift with many companies now offering standardized pay for WFH roles, recognizing that talent is no longer confined to high-cost hubs. Some of companies in higher cost of living areas are responding to this trend by offering alternative compensation or relying on other means to attract candidates, such as extra PTO or flextime, etc.
Additionally, candidate expectations are evolving. Workers are increasingly demanding pay equity irrespective of location. Another recent report found that a whopping 62% of employees expect their salaries to remain the same if they relocate to a lower-cost area. Companies adjusting salaries downward for remote workers have faced backlash, leading many to adopt national pay bands instead of regional guidelines.
Of course, forcertain industries like healthcare or retail, where services are tied to physical locations, salaries may still be more aligned with local costs. Similarly, junior or entry-level positions may experience greater regional variability.
For candidates, this evolution in salary structures means they can focus more on finding roles that align with their career goals rather than worrying about geographic pay disparities. For employers, this trend underscores the importance of staying competitive by offering equitable compensation that attracts top talent—regardless of location.
The key takeaway? The job market is leveling the playing field, proving that location matters less than ever for many skilled roles, and the simple fact is that where one lives is going to have much less to do with their income than their job function, skill, and experience.
Josh Hale has collaborated with companies to identify, engage, and hire top performers as a professional “headhunter” where he’s focused exclusively on the heat treat industry as part of International Search Partners since acquiring the firm in 2015. He works closely with Jessica Maier to support the practice, and, together, they’ve helped nearly a hundred companies and almost a thousand candidates find the right match within the industry, including for roles such as engineering, sales, quality, metallurgy, management, and more. For additional information on recruiting or job search services, please email [email protected] or call 619-465-9621.
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Advanced Heat Treat Corp. (AHT), a recognized leader in heat treat services, announced a building expansion at its Monroe, Michigan facility. Groundbreaking for the project took place on November 27, 2024 with construction anticipated to be complete by Summer 2025.
The new production space will house two additional pieces of equipment, a gas nitrider and an ion nitrider, with room for more equipment and possibly new services in the future.
“The building expansion and new equipment demonstrate our sustained growth and forward-looking investments as we continue to adhere to our mission of ‘exceeding expectations with UltraGlowing® results’,” said Mike Woods, President of Advanced Heat Treat Corp. “The additional nitriding units will increase our nitriding capacity and enable faster turnaround.”
AHT is collaborating with local contractors Davison Building & Development to bring this project to fruition, further supporting the local community and its businesses.
AHT has four locations: one in Monroe, Michigan; two in Waterloo, Iowa; and a fourth in Cullman, Alabama. Between the four locations, they offer over 20 surface treatments including gas and ion nitriding/nitrocarburizing, UltraOx®, induction hardening, stress relieving, and more. AHT Michigan has the unique capability to nitride parts up to 31-feet in length.
For more information about Advanced Heat Treat Corp. or its services, please visit www.ahtcorp.com or call 319-232-5221.
About Advanced Heat Treat Corp. Established in 1981, Advanced Heat Treat Corp. (AHT) is a recognized leader in providing heat treat services and superior metallurgical solutions to companies across the globe, with locations in Alabama, Iowa and Michigan. Their UltraGlow® family of processes includes plasma ion nitriding, ferritic nitrocarburizing (FNC), gas nitriding, UltraOx®, through hardening, carburizing, carbonitriding, induction hardening and many more.
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Furnace Builder SOLO Swiss SA has just appointed Mr. David Howard as Sales Director effective January 1, 2025. SOLO Swiss is one of two furnace builders in Switzerland, the other being Codere SA. Originally David is from Ireland and for the past almost 19 years he had been with Codere SA, the last few as Sales Manager so it is easy to see the fit. Both companies are well known and well respected furnace builders and it is very common to see their furnaces in Europe although less so in North America.
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Cherry Valley, ILLINOIS (January 7, 2025) – Ipsen USA is proud to ring in the new year by announcing the promotion of two team members to new roles in 2025. These leadership changes reinforce Ipsen’s strategic focus on strengthening the ICS (Ipsen Customer Service) and Sales teams to better serve customers.
Matt Clinite has been promoted to Ipsen USA Sales Director, reporting to Patrick McKenna, Ipsen USA President & CEO. Since joining Ipsen in 2014 as a Sales Associate in the Ceramics Division, Clinite has demonstrated outstanding leadership, consistently exceeding expectations in roles of increasing responsibility. Clinite most recently served as the Director of Ipsen Customer Service (ICS) Sales and Retrofits, and had a very successful 2024, leading his team to a record-breaking performance. In his new role, Clinite will lead Ipsen’s outside sales team, focusing on developing and implementing sales strategies, mentoring and guiding his team to excel in 2025, and fostering strong relationships with clients and key stakeholders.
Christina Connelly has been promoted to Director of Ipsen Customer Service (ICS) – Parts. Connelly’s leadership has been instrumental in driving significant growth and improvements within the parts team, which now includes production control, parts engineers, and pricing. Under Connelly’s guidance, parts bookings have grown at a double-digit percentage rate, and her initiatives, such as Kaizen events and customer engagement strategies, have enhanced performance and customer satisfaction. Looking forward, Connelly will lead the integration of parts purchasing and inventory planning, further strengthening Ipsen’s capabilities. Ipsen USA is excited to see what Clinite and Connelly will bring in their new leadership roles in 2025 and beyond.
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Yesterday “The Monty Heat Treat News” had an article entitled “Paul Cairney & Nitrogen Generation“. The article started off by mentioning Mr. Paul Cairney, an individual very well known in the field of on-site nitrogen generation and moved on to some thoughts from “The Monty” about nitrogen generation in the heat treatment industry. The article prompted a number of comments including this one from a user of such a system, Mr. Chris Davidson of controls company SSi of Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. Chris pointed out the pluses and minisus of such systems in a very unbiased manner.
“Our testing as shown that you get MUCH higher purity than advertised. From my understanding, we are able to choose which “filter” we pass the air through to create the nitrogen, each with a rated purity level. What we’ve found is that we easily achieve greater than advertised/labeled purity.
One note about nitrogen generation- Not good for vacuum quench application. Not because of the purity, but because of needing such a HIGH volume of nitrogen in a very short period- currently, as I am aware, no nitrogen generator can do that. To me, I don’t understand why you have a nitrogen generator that is filling the bulk tanks at each vacuum furnace, but I am not an expert on this.
Either way, I’m told nitrogen generators do not work for instantaneous high-volume flow. The other issue is if you lose power, you will only have the nitrogen available that has already been created. Bulk storage offers the advantage that you have a large quantity, typically way more than enough, to safely purge out all of your equipment.
Side note- works great in continuous flow applications: Nitriding/FNC, continuous furnaces, nitrogen tempers, etc… Basically if there is a continuous flow (does not have to be steady as they are a demand based system), they are great and should be used/installed!
I think there is a lot more growth for nitrogen generators in our industry, but it’s going to be application specific. Of course, for a continuous operation, there is certainly going to be a payback period (think autogen and the natural gas/electrical energy savings), but I have zero knowledge of the bulk tank storage contracts and refill fees to even begin to calculate this- I’d leave that to the experts.”
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For a number of years Mr. Paul Cairney was Sales Manager for South-Tek Systems, a manufacturer based in Wilmington, MC who provides nitrogen generating systems, however things change and effective the beginning of 2025 Paul is now Sales Manager at Novair which appears to offer the same product mix.
This prompted a few thoughts about Nitrogen generating systems; Nitrogen generating systems are a fact of life in many industries such as food and beverage however while nitrogen is used by just about every captive and commercial heat treater in the world it has never made it into the “big leagues”. We at “The Monty” have always been a bit puzzled as to why this technology has had such a low acceptance rate amongst heat treaters. The technology is simple, proven and easy to use but in spite of that we seldom see a system in a heat treat department. We know that many in the industry worry about the purity, however a typical system will achieve 99.9999% purity which should be enough for even stringent aerospace applications. We also know that users of bulk nitrogen storage systems sign multi-year contracts making it cost prohibitive to substitute an in-house nitrogen generating system in the middle of a contract but this replacement can be planned ahead. The fact that investing in an in house generating system involves a larger up front cost might be an issue but in our opinion it still makes financial sense to invest in a system.
So, we at “The Monty” still don’t understand why you see so few systems in the industry. And by the way we at “The Monty” have no financial stake whatsoever in this technology, just observations.
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Welcome to the first edition of “The Monty Heat Treat News” for 2025 which can be found by clicking the following link: January 2025 Magazine. In this 96 page edition you will find these stories plus many more;
As always, the entire team at “The Monty Heat Treat News” looks forward to your thoughts and comments. Sincerely, Gord, Jordan and Dale Montgomery
The end of 2024 brought with it a flurry of acquisitions in the commercial heat treat industry which caused the team at “The Monty” to reflect on how many acquisitions there actually were in the past year-this is what the team came up with in chronological order;
Bodycote Acquires Lake City Heat Treat. October 9, 2023 commercial heat treater Bodycote announced that they would be acquiring Lake City Heat Treat in Warsaw, Indiana-this deal was successfully completed on 19 January 2024.
Kittyhawk Inc., Acquires Stack HIP, LLC. March 7, 2024 Kittyhawk, Inc., backed by Trive Capital acquired Stack HIP, LLC in Albany, Oregon from Stack Metallurgical Group.
East-Lind Heat Treat Sold to California Group. In an acquisition which attracted little attention East-Lind Heat Treat of Madison Heights, Michigan, USA was sold to an unknown group based in California. The closing date was May 1 of this year.
Metals Technology Corp., to be Sold to SWD, Inc.After entering receivership in August of this year it was announced in October that a plating/coating company by the name of SWD Inc., had signed a letter of intent to acquire Metals Technology Corp., of Carol Stream IL. As far as we are aware this is planned for January of 2025.
HÄRTHA GROUP Acquires Donau-Härterei GmbH. In October of this year commercial heat treater HÄRTHA GROUP of Germany acquired another Germany based commercial heat treater by the name of Donau-Härterei GmbH.
Thermal Vac Sold to Tube Bending Technology. December 4th of 2024 commercial heat treater Thermal Vac of Orange, CA, USA was acquired by Tube Bending Technology also of California. This was the second heat treat acquisition by Tube Bending-the first being Scarrott Metallurgical which is mentioned above.
Paulo Products Company Sold to Aalberts N.V. And in the largest acquisition of all Aalberts N.V. has reached an agreement to acquire 100% of the shares of Paulo Products Company (Paulo), operating five facilities in the USA and one in Mexico, generating an annual revenue of approximately USD 105 million with 522 employees. This was announced December 30th with the deal set to be concluded the second quarter of 2025.
What will be the next acquisition? Well we know of a small one in Canada that will be consummated January 16th of this year if everything goes according to plan. Needless to say “The Monty” will be the first to give you news of any commercial heat treat acquisitions.
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SSi invites you to an informative seminar dedicated to two critical aspects of industrial safety and material science:
NFPA (National Fire Protection Association) standards
Metallurgy
This brings together
engineers
industry experts
maintenance personnel
to explore the intersection of fire safety codes and the properties of metals, offering valuable insights for improving safety, compliance, and material selection in various industrial applications.
Lets see who in the heat treatment industry has made career changes recently;
Jim Buntjer/Thermal Process Holdings; Jim has 10 years in the North American heat treatment industry working with commercial heat treaters such as Bluewater Thermal, Rockford Heat Treating and Service Heat Treating. Shortly before Christmas Jim made a change and is now Director of Quality with commercial heat treater Thermal Process Holdings. Find out the relative size of Thermal Process Holdings according to “The Monty Heat Treat News”, https://themonty.com/articles/the-montys-50-largest-north-american-commercial-heat-treaters-2024/
Jerry Moore/Bodycote; Jerry worked as a Field Service Technician with vacuum service provider Vesco-McLaughlin in East Hartford, CT for a number of years (Vesco-McLaughlin is now Busch Vacuum Solutions). December of 2024 Jerry was appointed Maintenance Supervisor at commercial heat treater Bodycote just down the road in Berlin, CT.
Mike Lifshits/Bodycote; Michael has enjoyed a long and varied career in the North American heat treat industry. We first ran across Michael at auto parts supplier and captive heat treater Linamar in Guelph, Ontario, Canada (Linamar is ranked by “The Monty Heat Treat News as one of the largest single location captive heat treaters in North America https://themonty.com/articles/15-largest-captive-heat-treats-north-america/). Subsequent to that he worked with commercial heat treater ALD Thermal Treatment in Port Huron, Michigan before moving to Bodycote in Canton, Michigan where for 10 years he was Regional Technical Manager. In a loss to the industry Michael retired December 20th, 2024.
Sean Duffin/Busch Vacuum; Sean worked for vacuum pump supplier Busch Vacuum for quite a few years as Director Business Development & Marketing, Canada. Sadly, for us Sean decided it was time to retire with December 6th, 2024 being his last day with the company. In this photo we see Sean on the left and Gord Montgomery inspecting a vacuum pump.
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