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Aspen Athletic acquires Fitness Forum Health Club in DeWitt
Fitness Forum exits the health-club business DeWITT — Aspen Athletic Clubs stretched its footprint for the third time this year with a Dec. 1 acquisition of Fitness Forum Health Club in DeWitt. The move gives Aspen its fifth location in 24,000 square feet at 6800 E. Genesee St. — its first club to the […]
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Fitness Forum exits the health-club business
DeWITT — Aspen Athletic Clubs stretched its footprint for the third time this year with a Dec. 1 acquisition of Fitness Forum Health Club in DeWitt.
The move gives Aspen its fifth location in 24,000 square feet at 6800 E. Genesee St. — its first club to the east of Syracuse. It also takes Fitness Forum out of the health-club field, leaving the company to focus on its 28-clinic physical-therapy business.
It is the first time Aspen has grown through an acquisition. The company launched its two other new locations this year from scratch. It started a 30,000-square-foot club at 3440 W. Genesee St. in Camillus in September, a few months after opening a 6,000-square-foot location at 125 E. Jefferson St. in downtown Syracuse.
Aspen Athletic didn’t originally intend to start three new gyms in a one-year superset, according to Nichole Polos, who owns and manages the company with her husband, Brent Polos. The company simply took advantage of opportunities that aligned with its long-term goals, she says.
“You can’t control timing in the business world,” she says. “But it’s definitely been part of our master plan. We had looked at a site in DeWitt years ago.”
Aspen wanted to have locations in Syracuse’s north, east, and west suburbs, along with one in the city itself. The DeWitt location fulfills that goal. So when Fitness Forum approached Aspen at the end of the summer, the company was willing to work out an agreement.
Negotiations continued until the deal closed in December. Neither of the companies are releasing terms of the transaction, however.
Aspen is offering jobs to all Fitness Forum Health Club employees. The DeWitt gym had about 40 workers, and Polos expects 20 to accept new positions. That will swell Aspen’s employment rolls to 190 people across its five locations.
Renovations are in the pipeline at the former Fitness Forum Health Club, which Aspen is now operating under its own name. They will include turning some offices into workout space and are likely to take place in the spring. However, plans are not yet finalized.
“Our main goal is people first,” Polos says. “We’re focused on getting the employees that want to come on board with us hired and trained. Also with the members, we’re trying to sit down and talk to each member one-on-one.”
Existing members will be paying less to use the gym, she adds. The average Fitness Forum Health Club member paid between $40 and $50 a month, whereas Aspen’s rates range from $9.99 to $24.99 per month.
Polos declines to share Aspen’s revenue totals or growth projections. The company is not likely to jump into any more major expansions for a year or two, she adds. It could eventually add express locations in the Syracuse area or open new clubs in other regions, such as the Southern Tier.
The health-club chain leases its new DeWitt space from the Edgewater Salina Co., according to Mike Durkin, a leasing and sales agent with Syracuse–based CBD Brokerage, LLC representing Aspen.
A section of Aspen’s newly acquired health club contains a Fitness Forum Physical Therapy operation. Fitness Forum had run the physical-therapy site within a portion of its health club. Now that it has sold the health club, it will sublease the physical-therapy space from Aspen so that it can continue to provide therapy there. Six Fitness Forum therapists work in that location.
Fitness Forum sold the health club because it felt it could no longer dedicate the proper resources to it, according to the company’s president and CEO, James Smith.
“Our core business, physical therapy and sports medicine, that industry is a challenge at this time,” he says. “I love fitness and I love the fitness business, but it was getting less and less attention from us.”
Fitness Forum Physical Therapy employs nearly 100 people in the Syracuse and Utica areas. It has 10 locations between the two regions. Companywide, it employs about 300 people.
The firm is on pace to generate $18 million in revenue. It generally targets growth between 3 percent and 5 percent, Smith says.
“I think working with Aspen is going to be exciting,” he says. “We need to make sure people realize this was done for the benefit of the members and the staff that was there.”
Fitness Forum Physical Therapy is headquartered in 6,000 square feet at 231 Walton St. in Syracuse. It owns or operates physical-therapy locations in six northeastern states.
Aspen Athletic Clubs is based in a 28,500-square-foot club at 5863 E. Circle Drive in Cicero. In addition to that location and its three clubs that are new this year, it also has a club at 8015 Oswego Road in the town of Clay that is just under 20,000 square feet.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
New CEO diagnoses a busy future for ClearPath
SYRACUSE — The new CEO of ClearPath Diagnostics says he joined a company that’s a specimen of growth. “We’ve had some real encouraging signs,” says Jack Finn, who started as ClearPath’s chief executive on Nov. 1. “We’ve added five salespeople in the last two or three months. In the last two months and even more
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SYRACUSE — The new CEO of ClearPath Diagnostics says he joined a company that’s a specimen of growth.
“We’ve had some real encouraging signs,” says Jack Finn, who started as ClearPath’s chief executive on Nov. 1. “We’ve added five salespeople in the last two or three months. In the last two months and even more so this month, we’re seeing a substantial increase in volume, especially in the cytology pap-smear area.”
Finn expects to keep the independent tissue and cytopathology practice on that upward trajectory. The laboratory, which is on pace to finish 2012 with $10 million in revenue, could generate $15 million or $16 million in revenue next year, he says. Doing so would amount to a doubling of revenue since 2011, when the business posted revenue of $8 million.
Sources of growth will include new testing techniques that allow ClearPath to boost its business with existing customers, according to Finn. The firm also expects to add upstate New York hospitals as clients and expand the company’s client base in existing territories in Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York City, and Northern Pennsylvania, as well as move into New Jersey.
The laboratory will initially target its primary service area, which extends about a hundred miles from Syracuse. Geographic expansion will come if it is successful growing in that service area, Finn says.
“There are some tests and pathology procedures that are difficult for smaller hospitals to bring in-house,” he says. “We believe we can do them here and return them back to pathologists within a hundred miles the next day.”
Finn believes ClearPath holds an advantage delivering next-day results. It has an existing currier network that will allow it to easily add hospital clients, he says. That’s a leg up over other laboratories, which rely on slower shipping companies to deliver samples, he continues.
Finn’s background
Boosting business with hospitals comes naturally to Finn. Before joining ClearPath, he spent 25 years at Centrex Clinical Laboratories, Inc. in New Hartford, which operated both hospital-based laboratories and outpatient services.
Finn was president and CEO of Centrex. He left a few years after the company was acquired by North Carolina–based Laboratory Corp. of America Holdings (NYSE: LH), known as LabCorp, in 2009.
“I agreed to stay on for a couple of years during the transition to allow the company to transition to the new owners,” Finn says. “After the transition, they didn’t need a CEO as much as they did when it was an independent laboratory.”
Centrex was a larger organization than ClearPath. It posted $45 million in annual revenue when it was sold and had grown to $48 million by the time Finn left, he says. At its peak it had about 450 employees.
ClearPath, on the other hand, has 57 employees after increasing its workforce by 15 people in 2012.
Still, Finn doesn’t anticipate having too much difficulty shifting to a smaller company.
“I was there at Centrex 25 years ago,” he says. “I’ve been through this particular part of the growth cycle, the $10 million to $12 million that we’re at now. It’s just a matter of rolling it back a little bit to where I was maybe 10 or 15 years ago.”
ClearPath is headquartered in 14,000 square feet in suite 305 at 600 E. Genesee St. in Syracuse. The business is owned by Dr. Michael Mazur, Dr. Mike Jozefczyk, and Dr. Ken Strumpf, as well as Chicago–based Shore Capital Partners, LLC.
The laboratory will continue to add employees, according to Finn.
“One of the areas we’re looking to expand our services is supporting dermatologists and skin-related tissues,” he says. “We’re currently recruiting for a specialist in that area.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
New owner expects to leverage PPC’s expertise for growth
DeWITT — The CEO of Belden, Inc. (NYSE: BDC) expects the addition of DeWitt–based PPC to bolster his company’s offerings in broadband technology. PPC is a developer and manufacturer of connectors used in telecommunications with a particular strength in broadband applications, according to Belden, which announced its $515.7 million acquisition of privately held PPC on
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DeWITT — The CEO of Belden, Inc. (NYSE: BDC) expects the addition of DeWitt–based PPC to bolster his company’s offerings in broadband technology.
PPC is a developer and manufacturer of connectors used in telecommunications with a particular strength in broadband applications, according to Belden, which announced its $515.7 million acquisition of privately held PPC on Dec. 11. Belden, based in St. Louis, designs and manufactures connectivity, networking, and cabling technology for the industrial, enterprise, and broadcast markets.
Broadband will be a key growth area for Belden in the coming years, Belden President and CEO John Stroup said during a presentation at the company’s investor day on Dec. 11. Existing broadband infrastructure can’t support the rising demand for higher bandwidth and broadband providers are continually looking to add more services, he noted.
Innovative connectors, like those manufactured by PPC, help providers reduce costs and boost customer satisfaction, Stroup said.
In addition, emerging markets with rising middle classes will be seeking higher bandwidths in the future, he said.
PPC will play a part in addressing all of those growth drivers, he added.
PPC, which employs 774 people in DeWitt, will generate 2012 revenue of about $238 million, according to Belden. It’s too early to say whether any layoffs could result from the acquisition, says Eric Ehlers, a Belden spokesman.
The companies are working on the best way to integrate their operations now, he adds. There are no immediate plans to cut jobs or make other changes at PPC, Ehlers says.
It’s also too soon to say whether Belden will continue to use the PPC name, although it has done so with some other companies it has acquired in the past, Ehlers says.
Belden will fund the PPC acquisition with about $300 million in cash and about $200 million in debt financing, Ehlers says.
Belden has 7,400 employees and manufacturing sites in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia.
Belden leaders expect the PPC deal to add 54 cents a share to their company’s adjusted 2013 earnings. Belden generated revenue of $1.98 billion in 2011, up 23 percent from 2010, and earned $114.3 million, up from $108.5 million.
The company is expecting 2012 revenue of $1.94 billion to $1.95 billion and adjusted income from continuing operations of $3 to $3.05 per share. Belden earned $2.40 per share from continuing operations in 2011.
Belden shares closed up nearly 6.5 percent on the day it announced the acquisition, before the open of trading. The stock hit a new 52-week high.
Belden’s business is split evenly between networking and connectivity and cabling, Ehlers says. The firm’s products end up with television broadcasters, factories, oil and gas businesses, data centers, and more.
No one from PPC could be reached for comment on the acquisition. The family-owned business began life during World War II. John Mezzalingua started the business with a single drilling machine in the basement of his in-laws’ restaurant, according to PPC’s website.
Mezzalingua’s son Dan took over the company after him and his grandson John is the current president. PPC has expanded over the years with a manufacturing plant in Denmark and became the first connector company to establish a presence in India, according to the firm’s website.
PPC now has factories in the Syracuse area and in locations around the world and grew its business tenfold during the 1990s.
PPC isn’t Belden’s first acquisition this year. The company acquired Miranda Technologies, Inc. (TSX: MT) in July. Based in Montreal, Miranda provided hardware and software for the broadcast infrastructure industry.
Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com
Upstate loses confidence in November, contrasting with NYC
November readings of New York consumers’ willingness to spend moved counterintuitively in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, dropping in the largely unscathed upstate region while rising in the hard-hit New York City area. Upstate New York’s overall index of consumer confidence fell 2 points to 73.6, according to polling conducted by the Siena (College) Research
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November readings of New York consumers’ willingness to spend moved counterintuitively in the wake of Superstorm Sandy, dropping in the largely unscathed upstate region while rising in the hard-hit New York City area.
Upstate New York’s overall index of consumer confidence fell 2 points to 73.6, according to polling conducted by the Siena (College) Research Institute (SRI). The dip came as metropolitan New York City’s overall consumer-confidence index swelled 2.5 points to 83.1.
“I was stunned by these numbers,” says Douglas Lonnstrom, professor of statistics and finance at Siena College and SRI founding director. “I was prepared to have a very gloomy November report. These numbers came in, and I was absolutely surprised.”
The changes in confidence levels pushed Upstate’s index below its break-even point, which is about 76. That means more of the region’s consumers said they felt pessimistic than optimistic. New York City’s confidence, meanwhile, moved above break-even to reflect more optimism.
A breakdown of overall sentiment into current and future components shows upstate residents souring on the future. The region’s current confidence increased 3.8 points to 77.7, while its future confidence plunged 5.6 points to 71.
In contrast, New York City–area residents raised their willingness to spend in both the present and future. New York City’s current-confidence index climbed 2.6 points to 78.8, while their future confidence ballooned 2.4 points to 85.9.
Election results in November appear to have overshadowed Superstorm Sandy’s effects in the eyes of many consumers, Lonnstrom says. President Barack Obama’s re-election boosted confidence in Democrat-heavy New York City. But it did not play as well in Upstate regions that have more Republican representation.
“The Democrats clearly love the election, and in their mind the election triumphed nature,” Lonnstrom says. “The results of the election make them happier than the aftermath of Sandy made them sad.”
An SRI breakdown along party lines supports that theory. Democrats posted a 1.8-point overall confidence gain to 96. Republicans lost 5.9 points of confidence, driving their index down to 57.8.
Statewide, SRI’s confidence index inched up 0.7 points to 79.4, which is its highest level since the summer of 2007. Current confidence rose 3 points to 78.4. Future confidence ticked down 0.8 points to 80.
Those results were largely in line with a national measurement from the University of Michigan. Its Index of Consumer Sentiment barely changed, adding 0.1 point to 82.7. Its current-confidence component jumped 2.6 points to 90.7, but its future component dipped 1.4 points to 77.6.
Gas and food prices
Declining concerns over gasoline and food prices provided a positive sign for consumers’ willingness to spend, Lonnstrom says. Worries decreased Upstate and in the state as a whole.
Upstate, 66 percent of consumers were concerned about gasoline prices in November, down from 71 percent in October. Food prices stoked worries among 64 percent of upstate residents, down from 77 percent last month. And 52 percent of consumers worried about the price of both gas and food, down from 62 percent.
Statewide, 56 percent of consumers worried about gas prices, a drop from 60 percent last month. Food prices caused unease among 62 percent of residents, down from 70 percent last month. Both gas and food prices concerned 45 percent of New Yorkers, down from 53 percent.
“Food prices dropped 8 percentage points,” Lonnstrom says. “That’s a huge jump down.”
New York buying plans
Buying plans rose across the board in November, SRI found. Cars and trucks posted the biggest increase, 1.7 points. Throughout the state, 14.1 percent of New Yorkers said they planned to buy a car or a truck.
Plans to purchase computers gained 1.6 points to 19.2 percent, while plans to buy furniture rose 3 points to 23.9 percent. Home-buying plans climbed 1.8 points to 4.4 percent, and expected major home improvements picked up 2.5 points to 17.5 percent.
“All the buying plans were up,” Lonnstrom says. “That almost never happens.”
SRI made random telephone calls to 804 New Yorkers over the age of 18 to conduct its November consumer-confidence polling. It develops sentiment indexes from statistical calculations, so they do not have a margin of error. The margin of error for buying plans is plus or minus 3.5 points.
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
Upstate Medical psychiatrists develop suicide-prevention system
SYRACUSE — Two forensic psychiatrists at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University are developing new technology to prevent suicide among adults in custodial care. The technology could be ready for use in jail settings as soon as 2014, says Dr. Andrew Kaufman, who is working on the effort full time. Kaufman
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SYRACUSE — Two forensic psychiatrists at the State University of New York (SUNY) Upstate Medical University are developing new technology to prevent suicide among adults in custodial care.
The technology could be ready for use in jail settings as soon as 2014, says Dr. Andrew Kaufman, who is working on the effort full time. Kaufman and Dr. James Knoll plan to commercialize the system through a startup firm, Zinnia Safety Systems, LLC.
Zinnia will take up residence in the CNY Biotech Accelerator in January and will be one of the first companies in the new facility.
The startup’s system monitors a pulse in the neck that would cease during a suicide attempt by hanging, Kaufman explains. Hanging is the most common method people use to commit suicide in jails, he adds.
The system would recognize the lack of a pulse in 10 to 12 seconds and a transmitter would then alert staff members. The technology also measures blood oxygen saturation, which would drop in someone placed a plastic bag over his or her head or otherwise tried to block airflow to the lungs, Kaufman says.
There’s nothing, Kaufman notes, to prevent someone from removing the pulse monitor, but staff members would know almost instantly if that happened. And that, he adds, would give medical providers valuable information about an individual’s mindset.
“It could indicate the need for a higher level of human observation,” Kaufman says.
Jails at the county and municipality level would be a first market for the technology, Kaufman says. Other facilities such as psychiatric units in hospitals, state prisons, and substance-abuse treatment centers are also on Zinnia’s radar.
The company is exploring monitoring individuals outside custodial settings as well. Kaufman says he’s had early talks about the system with the Center of Excellence for Suicide Prevention at the Veterans Health Administration Medical Center in Canandaigua.
Kaufman says he’ll eventually serve as Zinnia’s chief medical officer and is in the process of recruiting a CEO, other staff members, and a business advisory board. Knoll will serve as director of the firm’s scientific advisory board.
The company has received some early seed funding from Upstate Medical and also a $50,000 grant from the SUNY Research Foundation Technology Accelerator Fund. The money will go toward completion of a prototype and a trial of the technology at Upstate Medical, Kaufman says.
Kaufman adds he has had early talks with some angel investors and expects to raise additional financing in the next six months.
Currently, suicide prevention in custodial settings like jails relies mainly on human observation, Knoll says. Designers have attempted to make environments in those settings safer by, for example, eliminating places where individuals can hang themselves.
But staff members are still essentially the front line of defense by checking on patients or inmates at regular intervals — usually about 15 minutes, Kaufman says. The problem is that brain damage can occur in three to four minutes during a hanging attempt with death in about four or five minutes.
Suicides have even occurred in extremely high-risk individuals where facilities use one-on-one observation, Knoll notes. Observers might have a momentary lapse of concentration or need a break.
And they also might want to give the individual they’re observing some privacy, he adds. The monitoring technology could address those issues.
“This would allow the return of some personal privacy and dignity,” Knoll says.
The clinical trial planned for Upstate Medical will allow Knoll and Kaufman to begin answering some questions over how the system will affect individuals wearing it. Researchers will want to know if the system makes them feel more secure or if it indicates to them that their medical providers are taking their symptoms seriously.
The use of technology like this in psychiatry is long overdue, Knoll adds.
“We truly believe this is a worthy, valuable idea,” he says. “I think the basic notion of suicide prevention in custodial settings is a very important and noble effort.”
Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com
Cazenovia Equipment breezes into wind, solar markets with energy division
CAZENOVIA — A Central New York farm and landscaping equipment dealer believes it has solid ground on which to build windmills — its reputation. The John Deere dealership Cazenovia Equipment Co. installed its first wind turbines this year — putting up windmills at three dairy farms, one apple orchard, and an organic farm under its
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CAZENOVIA — A Central New York farm and landscaping equipment dealer believes it has solid ground on which to build windmills — its reputation.
The John Deere dealership Cazenovia Equipment Co. installed its first wind turbines this year — putting up windmills at three dairy farms, one apple orchard, and an organic farm under its Cazenovia Equipment Co. Energy division. The division, dubbed CEC Energy for short, hopes to use the equipment dealer’s longstanding upstate New York presence to convince customers it is here to stay.
Longevity is an important selling point because farms and other large-scale energy users are often concerned about renewable-energy companies’ stability, according to Mark Ferrara, CEC Energy project manager. The green-energy industry has been cyclical, and installers going out of business can leave customers searching for someone to service their renewable-energy equipment, he continues.
“It has traditionally been a problem in the industry,” Ferrara says. “What we bring to the industry is we’re going to be here for the next 50 years. We’ve been in business 50 years. We’re going to be here 50 more.”
CEC Energy’s wind-power projects cost between $70,000 and $5 million before state and federal incentives, Ferrara says. The division can install windmills of varying capacity, both over and under 100 kilowatts. A 50-kilowatt turbine normally produces between 100 kilowatt hours and 200 kilowatt hours in a year, enough to power a small- to medium-sized dairy farm, Ferrara adds.
“It’s something to help them reduce energy costs and be more profitable in business,” he says. “Turbines are expensive, but over the next 20 years you’re going to be paying a lot to the utility companies. Where do you want your money to go?”
CEC Energy also recently started offering solar-power equipment. It hasn’t installed any solar projects yet, but will be looking for farms, schools, hospitals, and other large, non-residential users who are interested.
The division works with wind-power manufacturers including Endurance Wind Power, which has its U.S. offices in Utah, Vermont–based Northern Power Systems, and Aeronautica Windpower, LLC of Massachusetts. CEC Energy plans to primarily install products from the solar-power manufacturer Helios Solar Works of Milwaukee.
Ferrara and two other employees make up the CEC Energy division, which is based in Cazenovia Equipment Co.’s new headquarters at 2 Remington Park Drive in Cazenovia. The dealer built that 28,500-square-foot facility after an August 2011 fire decimated its former 16,000-square-foot headquarters up the road at 3200 U.S. Route 20 in Nelson. The Remington Park Drive building opened for business April 9 of this year.
Cazenovia Equipment Co. also operates locations in Chittenango, Cortland, Clinton, Oneonta, LaFayette, Sandy Creek, Lowville, and Watertown. CEC Energy will serve all areas of upstate New York, Ferrara says. But the division has no plans to hire new employees at this time.
“In the upcoming years we are not looking to expand to put in 20 projects per year,” Ferrara says. “We are focusing on a smaller number of very high-quality projects.”
Cazenovia Equipment Co. started CEC Energy in the spring of 2010 after being approached by an initiative known as the Harvest the Wind Network. That network was started by a Kansas John Deere dealership, BTI Inc., to help other John Deere dealers sell and service wind-energy products.
Ferrara declined to share revenue totals and projections for CEC Energy or Cazenovia Equipment Co. But Cazenovia Equipment Co. President and co-owner Michael Frazee told The Central New York Business Journal in August that the company was on pace to generate $80 million in the fiscal year that ended Nov. 1. The business posted revenue of $68 million the year before, he said.
Frazee also shared plans to add 15 employees companywide over a calendar year, which would bring Cazenovia Equipment Co.’s total number of employees to 185. About 40 of those work at its headquarters.
CEC Energy attempts to find new customers by attending state agricultural shows and by hosting wind-power seminars, Ferrara says. Its next showcase is Cazenovia Equipment Co.’s “Drive Green Event” at the New York State Fairgrounds March 22-23.
“We gather people, many of whom have similar questions,” Ferrara says. “And we can really answer many of those questions at the same time.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com
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
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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
Ithaca clean-tech startup looks to seas for power
ITHACA — An Ithaca–based clean-tech startup firm, called WavElectric, is developing a power-generation system that focuses on producing electricity using the motion of ocean waves. The company’s technology was developed by Angel Martinez, a senior research technician at Cornell University. The system involves a kinetic-power generator that is activated by movement, says Alessandro Anzani, WavElectric
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ITHACA — An Ithaca–based clean-tech startup firm, called WavElectric, is developing a power-generation system that focuses on producing electricity using the motion of ocean waves.
The company’s technology was developed by Angel Martinez, a senior research technician at Cornell University. The system involves a kinetic-power generator that is activated by movement, says Alessandro Anzani, WavElectric CEO.
The generator is housed inside a floating buoy. Its one moving part is not exposed to sea water or the outside air, Anzani notes.
That makes it more resistant to damage than some other wave power systems.
“They’re exposed to high wear and tear,” Anzani says. “The joints they have eventually fail in marine water. Our generator is sealed at two levels.”
In addition, the generator WavElectric uses activates with any motion, not just movement in a specific direction, Anzani says.
Wave power in general has the potential to be more cost effective and reliable than other renewable sources like solar or wind, he adds. Waves, he notes, are constant.
Even in ideal locations, blowing wind and shining sun are intermittent. Wave power could also be available in more locations than wind and solar, Anzani says.
Initially, the company plans to deploy the system to power marine-monitoring devices. There are about 50,000 buoys floating throughout the world’s oceans, Anzani explains.
They track shipping traffic, water quality, weather, and more. They all run on batteries that need to be replaced regularly.
WavElectric’s systems could integrate with the devices to keep them powered constantly, Anzani says. The firm is already talking with marine monitoring companies about its technology.
“It’s an incredible cost just to keep those batteries charged,” Anzani says.
Eventually, Anzani and Martinez want to scale the system and build offshore arrays that could transmit electricity back to land and even into the power grid, Anzani says. The system’s output can range from a few watts up to several megawatts of power.
WavElectric is working with the Shoals Marine Laboratory in Maine to run five months of ocean deployment and testing for the generator. Shoals is run jointly by Cornell and the University of New Hampshire.
Anzani runs an angel investing firm, Smartup Capital, LLC, which is WavElectric’s initial investor. The company is also working with the Clean Tech Center incubator at the Tech Garden in downtown Syracuse.
WavElectric (www.wavelectric.com) is seeking additional investment now, says Anzani, who received his master’s degree in business administration at Cornell. The firm’s first systems for recharging monitoring devices should be on the market by next summer.
Martinez began developing the system while volunteering in a coastal community in Mexico, Anzani says. The area lacked access to the electric grid so Martinez began working on a way to provide power for the community using the ocean.
Reactor project at Cornell wins DOE funding
ITHACA — A research project led by two Cornell University professors aims to create compact reactors used in production of biofuel from algae. Biofuels can be made from a variety of stocks, including corn and wood. As it turns out, algae is especially energy dense, meaning a given amount of algae would produce more fuel
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ITHACA — A research project led by two Cornell University professors aims to create compact reactors used in production of biofuel from algae.
Biofuels can be made from a variety of stocks, including corn and wood. As it turns out, algae is especially energy dense, meaning a given amount of algae would produce more fuel than the same amount of corn, says David Erickson, one of the project’s lead researchers.
The problem is the algae for fuel are typically grown in large pond-like reactors. They use a lot of land and water and require large amounts of energy to produce fuel, explains Erickson, an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering.
The pond-like reactors are simply not economically viable.
Erickson and Largus Angenent, an associate professor in Cornell’s Department of Biological and Environmental Engineering, are working on a way to change that. The reactor they’re developing would be a 1-meter cube, but yield the same amount of biofuel as a pond measuring 100 meters by 10 meters.
A $910,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy is helping the project move forward.
So far, the researchers have demonstrated all the various elements of the reactor separately. The grant will help them bring the system together into a prototype that can be tested and evaluated as a whole.
It will also help them identify the best path to market, Erickson contends. He and Angenent could look to license the technology to another company or commercialize it themselves through a startup business.
The reactor is compact enough that it could be located close to sources of carbon used in biofuel production, Erickson says. Such sites could include power plants and/or chemical production facilities.
The reactor would be especially helpful in environments where outdoor ponds would freeze in the winter, making production at carbon-producing sites more challenging. It would also allow biofuel production in places that don’t have enough space for the large ponds currently used.
Currently, carbon used in biofuel production is transported to the reactor from the source, Erickson notes. The compact reactor he and Angenent are working on could change that.
The researchers are in the process of filing patents to protect their technology. The system works by using unique ways to deliver light, introduce carbon and other nutrients, and extract fuel at the same time, Erickson explains.
The federal grant was one of 66 awarded by the Energy Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency — Energy (ARPA-E). The projects received a total of $130 million through the department’s OPEN 2012 program.
ARPA-E seeks out transformational, breakthrough technologies that show fundamental technical promise, but are too early for private-sector investment, according to the Energy Department. The Cornell project was one of four in New York state to receive a total of $9.5 million in funding.
GE Global Research in Niskayuna, GE Power and Water in Schenectady, and the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) in Rensselaer were the other New York winners.
Contact Tampone at ktampone@cnybj.com
ExxonMobil forecast: North America to become net energy exporter by 2025
Led by technological advances that allow for drilling natural gas and oil in shale and other previously unreachable locations, North America is poised to become a net exporter of energy by 2025. That’s according to a report issued Dec. 11 by energy giant ExxonMobil, entitled: “The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040.” “Today, North
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Led by technological advances that allow for drilling natural gas and oil in shale and other previously unreachable locations, North America is poised to become a net exporter of energy by 2025. That’s according to a report issued Dec. 11 by energy giant ExxonMobil, entitled: “The Outlook for Energy: A View to 2040.”
“Today, North America stands out as a prominent example of the dynamic nature of energy supply and demand over time. The region is capitalizing on advanced technologies to unlock huge oil and gas resources that were previously uneconomic to produce,” the company said in the report.
The fastest growth will be in natural-gas production. The company also predicts that natural gas will displace coal as the second-largest global fuel source by 2025.
ExxonMobil forecasts natural-gas demand to grow by 65 percent by 2040 and for the fuel to account for 30 percent of total global electricity generation by then.
The report also forecast wind, solar, and biofuel energy demand to increase more than five-fold by 2040 from 2010 levels. Still, those renewable-energy sources will only account for 3 to 4 percent of total world energy demand “as greater advances in technology are needed to increase the commercial viability and associated economics of developing these resources,” the report said.
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