What Happened to Ontario Knife Company?

If you’ve heard that Ontario Knife Company shut down, you heard half the story. The other half matters just as much, and it changes what you should do if you own one of their knives or you’ve been thinking about buying one.

Here’s the short version: Ontario Knife Company didn’t disappear. The brand was sold, the historic New York factory closed, and 56 people lost their jobs in the summer of 2023. The name lives on under a new owner. The 134-year-old manufacturing operation in Franklinville, New York does not.

That distinction trips up a lot of people. Search the company name and you’ll find forum threads declaring it dead, blog posts that stop at “factory closed,” and plenty of folks who assume their Old Hickory paring knife is now a discontinued relic. The reality is more interesting, and more useful if you’re trying to make a buying or collecting decision.

We’ve handled and sold knives from a lot of American makers over the years, so we dug into the verified record to lay out what actually happened to Ontario Knife Company, who owns it now, and what it means for you.

Did Ontario Knife Company go out of business?

No. Ontario Knife Company was sold, not liquidated. In 2023, its parent company sold the brand, designs, trademarks, and inventory to Blue Ridge Knives, a Virginia-based distributor. The Franklinville, New York factory closed on July 27, 2023, and 56 workers lost their jobs, but the Ontario name and product lines continue under new ownership.

Think of it as a brand changing hands, not a business closing its doors. That’s a common outcome in the knife world, and it’s very different from a maker simply vanishing.

Here’s the timeline in plain order:

• March 30, 2023: Servotronics, Ontario’s parent company, announced it would sell the knife business.
• July 2023: Blue Ridge Knives agreed to buy Ontario’s assets for roughly $2.1 million.
• July 27, 2023: The Franklinville factory shut down; 56 employees were let go.
• August 1, 2023: The sale to Blue Ridge Knives officially closed.
• January 2025: Ontario showed up at SHOT Show with new models, including a MagnaCut-steel version of the RAT folder.

A quick history of Ontario Knife Company

Ontario Knife Company has roots going back to 1889, when it started in Naples, New York. Manufacturing eventually settled in Franklinville, in Cattaraugus County, where the company became a fixture for generations of local workers.

For most people, the name calls up one of two things: a drawer full of kitchen knives or a piece of military kit. Both are accurate.

On the civilian side, the Old Hickory line is probably Ontario’s most recognized product. Those simple 1095 carbon steel kitchen and butcher knives have been a budget-friendly staple for decades, and they developed a cult following among hunters and outdoorsmen who like a high-carbon blade they can sharpen to a screaming edge without spending much. The company also built the RAT series with Randall’s Adventure & Training, the RAT-1 and RAT-2 folders and the fixed-blade RAT-7, which earned a strong reputation among everyday-carry and bushcraft users.

On the military side, Ontario’s resume is long. The company produced M9 bayonets, the OKC-3S bayonet adopted by the Marine Corps, the ASEK (Aircrew Survival Egress Knife), the M1942 machete, the Mark 3 Navy diving knife, and the Spec Plus series of field knives. If you served and were issued a bayonet or a machete in the last few decades, there’s a real chance Ontario made it.

That heritage is exactly why the 2023 news hit so hard for people who care about American-made blades.

Why Servotronics sold Ontario Knife Company

This is the part most coverage skips, and it’s the key to understanding the whole thing. Ontario wasn’t an independent knife company answering only to itself. It was a subsidiary of Servotronics, Inc., a publicly traded company whose core business is aerospace components, servo valves and motion-control parts for aircraft.

In other words, the knives were one division of a company whose real focus was somewhere else entirely. On March 30, 2023, Servotronics announced it would sell the knife business to concentrate on its core aerospace markets. According to the company’s own announcement of the completed sale, the decision was a strategic one about where the parent company wanted to put its resources.

No scandal, no bankruptcy, no dramatic collapse. A corporate parent decided the knife division didn’t fit its long-term plan and put it up for sale. That happens. The hard part is that the decision landed on a real factory full of real people in a small New York town.

Who owns Ontario Knife Company now?

The buyer was Blue Ridge Knives, a large knife distributor based in Marion, Virginia. If you’ve bought knives online, there’s a decent chance some of them passed through Blue Ridge’s warehouse at some point — they’re one of the bigger wholesale distributors in the U.S. knife trade.

Per reporting from Knife Magazine, Blue Ridge purchased Ontario’s assets for around $2.1 million, and the deal closed on August 1, 2023. That purchase covered the things that make a brand a brand: the Ontario name, the knife designs, the trademarks, and the existing inventory. Blue Ridge also picked up the Old Hickory trademark, so that kitchen-knife line came along with the rest.

Here’s the catch that confused a lot of people. The brand sale and the factory were handled separately. Buying the designs and the name didn’t mean buying the Franklinville plant and keeping it running with its existing crew. That’s why you saw headlines about both a sale and a closure in the same week — they were two different transactions with two very different outcomes.

If you want to put new Ontario or Old Hickory knives into your kit, you can still find them through normal retail channels — including the Ontario Knife Company selection here. We also carry a broad selection of knives from a range of makers, and the category is a good place to compare working blades regardless of which brand you land on.

The end of the Franklinville factory

The human side of this story deserves more than a footnote. The Franklinville plant had been part of that community for well over a century. When it closed on July 27, 2023, 56 employees lost their jobs, as local reporting from The Bradford Era documented at the time.

For a small town in Cattaraugus County, that’s not an abstract business-page statistic. That’s neighbors, families, and a skilled workforce that knew how to run blade-grinding and heat-treat equipment. Skills like that don’t transfer to the next employer down the road overnight.

It’s worth being honest about what was lost here. A 134-year-old American manufacturing operation stopped making knives. Whatever happens with the brand going forward, the specific combination of that factory, that machinery, and those people building Ontario knives in Franklinville came to an end. We don’t think that should get glossed over just because the name survived.

Are Ontario knives still being made?

Yes, the brand is active again, though some questions about production remain open. The clearest evidence came in January 2025, when Ontario Knife Company appeared at SHOT Show under Blue Ridge ownership with new products, including a MagnaCut-steel version of the RAT folder. MagnaCut is a modern, premium stainless steel that’s been in high demand the last few years, so putting it on a flagship folder is a strong signal that someone is actively investing in the line, not just selling off old stock.

That said, we want to be straight about what’s confirmed and what isn’t. The brand is producing knives again, and the familiar lines — Old Hickory, the RAT series, military-pattern fixed blades — remain part of the catalog. What’s less clear from public sources is exactly where every model is now produced and how the post-sale manufacturing fully shook out. Reporting at the time noted efforts to restart some New York production, but the picture isn’t fully nailed down in the public record.

So here’s our honest read: Ontario Knife Company is alive and making knives under Blue Ridge Knives, with new development happening as recently as 2025. If country-of-origin matters to you for a specific model, check the current markings and product listing before you buy rather than assuming it matches an older example.

What this means if you own or want an OKC knife

This is the practical part, and it’s where the “is it dead?” question actually matters to your wallet.

If you own older Ontario or Old Hickory knives: Nothing about the brand sale hurts the knife in your hand. A pre-2023 Franklinville-made Ontario is the same tool it was the day you bought it. For collectors, factory-closure stories sometimes nudge interest toward older, pre-sale production, especially marked military pieces and early fixed blades. We wouldn’t promise your kitchen knife is suddenly a treasure, but documented, USA-made examples from the Franklinville era are exactly the kind of thing collectors pay attention to over time.

If you’re shopping for a new one: Ontario and Old Hickory knives are still out there and still worth considering on their own merits. Judge the specific knife — steel, grind, fit and finish, intended use — the same way you would any other working blade. The brand shakeup doesn’t change whether a particular model is right for your needs, and the same goes for peer American makers like Ka-Bar.

If you’re a collector evaluating a specific piece: Markings, dates, and pattern details still tell the story, just like they do with any older knife or piece of military kit. If you’re trying to figure out what an older marked bayonet or fixed blade actually is, that’s the same homework collectors do across the board.

For collectors with older military blades, bayonets, or fixed-blade Ontarios they’re thinking about parting with, our Sell To Us program is set up for exactly that kind of conversation, and our collectibles selection gives you a feel for the kinds of historical pieces that find new homes. If you’ve got something and you’re not sure what it is, reach out to our team and we’ll help you figure it out.

The bottom line on what happened to Ontario Knife Company

So, what happened to Ontario Knife Company? It was sold, not shuttered. Aerospace parent Servotronics offloaded the knife business in 2023, Blue Ridge Knives bought the brand and designs for about $2.1 million, and the historic Franklinville, New York factory closed that July with 56 jobs lost. The name and the product lines, including Old Hickory and the RAT folders, continue under Blue Ridge, with new models like a MagnaCut RAT showing up at SHOT Show in 2025.

A few things to carry away:

• The brand survived; the original New York factory and its workforce did not.
• Servotronics sold to refocus on aerospace, not because the knives stopped selling.
• Older, Franklinville-made Ontario knives are still good tools and may draw collector interest over time.
• New Ontario and Old Hickory knives are still being made; check current markings if origin matters to you.

The honest answer to “is it gone?” is no, but it’s not quite the same company it was either. If you’re sitting on an older Ontario piece and you’re curious what it is or what it’s worth, that’s the kind of thing we like talking about. Bring it our way and we’ll give you a straight read.