• COVER STORY: BONNEY FORGE •
Original Bonney Vise & Tool Works manual from the 1920s.
the piping and energy industry, where he spent years building expertise from the ground up. He was not handed anything. He learned the business by being inside it, working across engineering, sales, and operations, accumulating the kind of knowledge that only comes from time, discipline, and genuine curiosity.
By the time Gulf + Western was looking to move on from Bonney Forge, Leone knew the company well. He had watched it operate. He understood what it was. He understood with the clarity of someone who had spent a career in this industry what it could become with the right ownership behind it.
In 1984, Leone completed the acquisition through a leveraged buyout, investing his own capital alongside institutional partners. It was a significant personal commitment, and one he made with full conviction. The company had a century of earned credibility, proprietary products with no real substitute, and a workforce that took pride in getting it right.
What it needed was an owner who would invest in it rather than extract from it. Leone intended to be exactly that.
Building Something That Lasts The early years were not without challenge. One of the most significant decisions Leone made was relocating all manufacturing operations to Mount Union, Pennsylvania, a move that required building a skilled workforce from the ground up in a new community. The initial facility was modest. Leone has spoken about standing in that first building, 25,000 square feet, and seeing not what it was but what it was going to be.
Today, that same site anchors a fully integrated, state-of-the-art manufacturing campus exceeding 300,000 square feet.
What set Leone apart from the corporate ownership that preceded him was his orientation toward time. Leone thought in decades. Profits were reinvested into people, into equipment, into quality systems, into the kind of infrastructure that compounds over time.
He was not building a business to sell. He was building one to last. He did not do it alone. The company’ s global expansion was no solo effort. Rick Leone, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing, was essential in establishing the Bonney Forge valve line internationally, laying commercial groundwork that the business continues to build on today.
Strategic acquisitions expanded the company ' s capabilities at the right moments. The 2002 acquisition of WFI International in Houston, Texas, brought complementary product lines under the Bonney umbrella. In 2013, Bonney acquired an Italian valve business that had long operated as a Bonney licensee, extending the company ' s global valve platform. The day after closing, it was business as usual. That kind of seamless integration does not happen without trust built over years.
Today, Bonney Forge operates across multiple world-class manufacturing sites: its flagship campus in Mount Union, Pennsylvania; WFI International in Houston, Texas; B. F. E. in Italy; and Bonney Forge Shanghai. Each facility operates under the same quality philosophy and the same commitment to exceeding the standards the industry sets, not merely meeting them.
Bonney Forge designs, manufactures, and tests every product in strict accordance with the most demanding international codes the industry recognizes, among them ASTM, ASME, API, DIN, ISO, and NACE. Every product ' s chemical and mechanical properties are fully traceable to its original forging lot and raw material heat.
An individual believed to be Weldolet ® inventor Fred S. Durham pictured with a large branch connection, circa 1930.
One hundred percent of Bonney Forge valves are pressure tested as a standard. So is the Eco-Seal ® Low Emissions packing, a proprietary low-emission valve technology that Bonney Forge made standard across its entire valve line.
A Mission Written Once, Lived Every Day
In the first months after the 1984 acquisition, Leone drafted a mission and creed for Bonney Forge. It has not had a single word changed since. It is in every Bonney Forge office. Every new employee learns it. Every customer encounters it.
The mission calls for Bonney Forge to be the recognized leader in its field,
8 Valve World Americas | May 2026 | www. valve-world-americas. com