Sun Environmental Corp. grows quickly over two years

DeWITT  —  Sun Environmental Corp. wants to keep on trucking after two years of growth. 

The company, which industry veterans Matthew Notaro and James Hanmer founded in June 2010, specializes in environmental remediation like underground storage-tank removal, industrial cleaning, and contaminated-soil remediation. It also works in waste transportation and disposal as well as consulting.

Sun Environmental added three employees in the last year, bringing its total work force to nine people. Notaro and Hanmer were the firm’s only employees when they founded it.

“We’d like to expand more,” says Notaro, Sun Environmental’s president. “We’re growing fast, but we’d like to keep up a steady growth.”

The corporation does not have any immediate plans to continue hiring, Notaro adds. In part, that’s because winter is approaching. The remediation business is tied to the construction industry, which slows down during the winter months, Notaro says.

Sun Environmental leases a 5,000-square-foot building at 6051 Galster Road in DeWitt. It leases that building from Eric F. Thresh, according to records from Onondaga County’s Office of Real Property Tax Services. 

Notaro and Hanmer decline to share revenue totals for Sun Environmental, but say it is on pace to grow revenue by 46 percent in 2012.

Industry experience has helped the company expand quickly, says Notaro, who was a project manager at OP-TECH Environmental Services, Inc. before founding Sun Environmental, according to his LinkedIn résumé. He and Hanmer each have about 15 years of experience in the remediation industry, he says.

“Because of our being in the business for years, we have strong vendors that we can rely on to support us with the disposal of material,” he says. “Where it can go really depends on what, specifically, it is. If it’s oily water it will go one place. If it’s sludge it will go another.”

Notaro declined to name any of the vendors Sun Environmental works with for waste disposal. But he says his connections have allowed him to set up green operations, such as trucking wastewater from one client and supplying it to a local company for reuse. That keeps the receiving company from tapping into the county’s supply of fresh water, he says.

“It’s beneficial reuse,” Notaro says. “And it wasn’t like that before we took over.”

Sun Environmental has not worked on large-scale construction projects to this point, although Notaro and Hanmer say they have the experience to handle remediation on brownfield sites. The company takes care of many smaller jobs, according to Notaro. Moving up to larger projects is one way he hopes to expand.

The firm has no plans to grow to serve downstate New York. It will currently work on projects across Upstate, from Buffalo to New York’s eastern border and from the Canadian border to the Pennsylvania border, Notaro says. 

Running an environmental remediation company required a substantial investment in equipment, according to Hanmer, who is Sun’s CEO. Sun’s equipment includes a liquid vacuum truck, a wet-dry vacuum truck, an 8,000-gallon transport trailer to haul waste, pickup trucks, box vans, a spill trailer, and a range of other small equipment. Hanmer says he does not have an estimate of the investment the business made in its equipment.

“We slowly acquired it,” he says. “The startup cost was a little bit, and once we got started it grew.”

M&T Bank provides Sun with a line of credit as well as equipment loans.           

Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com