Geneva hair-products maker powers up with windmills

GENEVA — Zotos International, Inc. found a way for the wind to blow through its hair-care products.

The Geneva–based manufacturer uses a pair of 1.65-megawatt wind turbines to help power its plant at 300 Forge Ave. The 364-foot turbines have been operational for about 12 months, and Zotos hopes to use them to generate as much as 5 million kilowatt hours a year.

Zotos (zotos.com) makes hair-care and styling-aid products for hair salons and other professionals. Those customers aren’t necessarily buying products solely because they’ve been produced using renewable energy, according to Anthony Perdigao, Zotos’ vice president of operations and chief sustainability officer. However, green techniques help set the company’s offerings apart from the rest of the market, he says.

“We felt it was very important we have a strong sustainability initiative in place to stress our point of difference in the marketplace,” Perdigao says. “We wanted to look at ways of not only reducing our energy demand, but how we can create our own renewable energy on site.”

The windmills will save Zotos between $400,000 and $500,000 a year in energy costs, the company estimates, which is about half of its energy expenses.

Installing the windmills wasn’t an overnight process, according to Perdigao. It took three years to complete the project, including wind mapping, permitting, and installation. The project cost $7.8 million, with 30 percent coming from a grant under the 2009 federal American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus legislation). Zotos footed the rest of the cost using its own cash.

The Wheatfield–based engineering firm Plant-IQ, LLC led engineering for the turbines. Hyundai manufactured the windmill equipment, while Siemens produced controls, according to Perdigao.

So far, windmill-power production has been reliable, he says. But Zotos has had to learn the ins and outs of generating its own energy.

“We’re a manufacturer of beauty products and not used to managing utilities and energy production,” Perdigao says. “We have our share of learning curve and optimization curve that we’re going through. I expected that in a project of this magnitude.”

One optimization issue the company is dealing with concerns the amount of power it produces. The plant’s windmills sometimes generate more energy than it uses, and Zotos sends surplus electricity back into the power grid. But it needs to renegotiate its interconnectivity agreement with NYSEG to allow it to sell back more energy, according to Perdigao.

There are also times when the wind turbines don’t produce enough power to run the plant, when Zotos has to tap the electricity grid. The company then purchases renewable-energy credits from Renewable Choice Energy, a Boulder, Colo. firm.

In April 2012, Zotos met a goal it had set of using 100 percent renewable energy by 2013, Perdigao says. The firm also earned a 2012 Green Power Leadership Award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

About 1,000 people work at Zotos’ Geneva plant, which is 670,000 square feet. Roughly 400 of those employees are full-time workers for Zotos, while the rest are long-term contract employees, Perdigao says. The company added about 30 employees at the site in the last year and will likely continue to grow, he adds, declining to share a specific hiring projection.

The Geneva plant is Zotos’ only facility. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tokyo–based cosmetics company Shiseido Co., Ltd. Shiseido reported net sales of 333.6 billion yen, or just over $4 billion, in the first two quarters of its current fiscal year that ended Sept. 30. sales were down 0.8 percent from the same period last year.

Perdigao declined to share Zotos-specific revenue totals or growth projections.

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com