Norris' New Boom

Figuratively as well as literally, bomb making is a boom-and-bust business. Last year it was bust for Norris Industries of Vernon, Calif., one of the biggest and busiest U.S. makers of casings and other metal hardware for bombs, mortar shells and artillery projectiles. The reduction of the American war effort in Viet Nam cut Norris' military sales by more than a third, though they still accounted for 28% of the company's total revenues of $272 million. Now the boom seems likely to resume with the intensification of U.S. bombing in Southeast Asia. In the first nine months of the Government's current fiscal year, Norris received $81 million worth of ordnance contracts, and it has another major contract pending.

Constructive Change. Happily for Norris, however, war is no longer essential to its prosperity. Since 1965, Kenneth Norris Jr., son of the company's founder and now its chief executive, has been using military profits to buy a string of firms that make such civilian products as door locks, garbage disposals and plumbing fixtures. The acquisitions may not have freed the company from volatile shifts in sales and profit. Most of the new businesses that it has entered are related to home building, which in the past has suffered up and down swings almost as extreme as those in weapons manufacturing. Right now, however, Norris has hit the civilian market at a good time: residential building has helped lead the U.S. economy's recovery from the 1970 recession. The construction surge played a major part in pushing Norris' profits up 34% last year, to $16 million, despite the slump in its military work.

The current conversion to civilian products is the second major change that Norris has made in the nature of its business. The company, founded in 1930, began life as a maker of magic coins, trick mirrors, chauffeurs' badges and dispensers for toilet paper and soap. Before World War II, however, it developed the first seamless cartridge casing, and by V-J day it had "produced more kinds and sizes of artillery cases than any other contractor," according to a company brochure. During the Korean conflict, Norris operated the largest single plant producing cartridge cases for the U.N. forces, and the increased U.S. involvement in Viet Nam caused it to build two new ordnance-making plants in the mid-1960s, raising the total to five.

Price of Peace. In the past, Norris has paid a high price in peacetime for its war wealth. Its profits dropped dramatically after World War II. That could happen again when the Viet Nam War ends, but the switch to civilian production makes that much less likely than it would have been a few years ago. The laconic Kenneth Norris argues further that "people tend to forget that tank and artillery crews are always burning up shells in training."

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