Business for General Carbide Corp. in Hempfield was going so good at the beginning of the year, owner Mona Pappafava said, gesturing with her hand slanted upward at a 90-degree angle upward.

But in mid-March, the coronavirus pandemic hit.

“Then it went straight down,” Pappafava said Friday, holding her hand downward at the same 90-degree angle as she sat in the bright lobby of her company’s new 50,000-square foot headquarters and manufacturing facility.

General Carbide, which manufacturers finished tooling, wear parts and components for customers in diverse markets, said its business in the oil and gas industry and automotive markets plunged, but it was going strong for production of dies needed to make bullet and shell casings, said Pappafava, company’s CEO.

People bought more guns and ammunition because they had safety concerns because of the pandemic and protests across the country, Pappafava said.

To help through the downturn, in which Pappafava said she and all the other workers took pay cuts, the company turned to the federal Paycheck Protection Program, which was designed to help companies keep employees on the job. General Carbide obtained about $2 million from the federal program, which helped her keep the company’s 250 workers on the payroll.

“It was very critical to us. It allowed us to keep our skilled people,” Pappafava said, following a tour of the company’s headquarters by Small Business Administrator Jovita Carranza and a group of other women business owners.

The Paycheck Protection Program, which was funded through the federal CARES Act that Congress passed in March, has provided more than 173,000 loans totaling more than $20 billion in funding to businesses in Pennsylvania. The administration of the program had come under fire this spring by business owners who were unable to obtain funding when competing with companies that had more resources when applying for the money.

At Stellar Precision Components in Jeannette, which makes precision machined parts for the aerospace and commercial industries, company president Lori Albright said they were approved for less than $1 million in Paycheck Protection money and did not use its entire allocation.

“It helped us to keep our employees,” Albright said, noting the business has 83 workers, including her son and two daughters.

Albright, who started in 1981 as a secretary to her father, founder Mike Vucish, does not need any prompting to recall when the pandemic shutdowns slammed her Stellar Precision Components business in Jeannette — March 19 at 4:50 p.m. — and her phone “started to explode.

“We were not sure we were able to stay open,” because of Gov.Wolf’s decree that nonessential businesses not operate, Albright said.

Because they provide parts for defense contractors, particularly for missiles and other armament, Albright said they were able to be certified as an essential business.

They were able to juggle work schedules to reduce the number of people on each of three shifts and move machinery to create social distancing, Albright said.

They had some supply chain issues, and some customers that normally inspect a product at the plant were unable to travel to Jeannette, Albright said.

Business started to open up again in July, Albright said, and there was a backlog of work.

As a defense contractor, Albright said she is not competing locally with other machine shops for the defense work.

“I compete for talent — skilled workers,” of which there are not enough, Albright said.

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