Syracuse Label settles into new, larger printing plant

CICERO — Most adults associate Halloween with black cats, ghosts, goblins and ghouls, witches, and haunted houses. For children, it’s trick or treat. On Oct. 31, 2016, the staff at Charles A. Gaetano Construction Corp. wasn’t focused on any of the above. That Halloween marked the day the contractor handed over a certificate of occupancy to Syracuse Label Company, Inc. (d/b/a Syracuse Label and Surround Printing), the owner of a new, 60,000-square-foot printing plant located in the Hancock Airpark in North Syracuse (Town of Cicero).

The Airpark building replaces a 38,000-square-foot plant located on Luther Avenue in Liverpool (Town of Salina) that served the company for 42 years. The Luther Avenue building is a composite of the original structure and seven additions cobbled together over the life of the company.

Syracuse Label and Surround Printing
“The core of our business is supplying labels,” states Alaimo, president of SLSP. “We print and finish labels for the pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, cosmetic, food and beverage, household-products, dairy, and wine industries. In addition to printing pressure-sensitive labels, we print flexible packaging, producing items such as packets, cartons, and shrink sleeves for beverage containers, wine, spirits, cosmetics, and household products. The company supports a number of long-time customers throughout the Northeast.”

Syracuse Label started in 1967 in Roscoe Towne’s garage.

“Towne was an entrepreneur who started out with a two-color Mark Andy press,” says Alaimo. “The business grew steadily for two decades. When Towne sold the business in 1987 to Peter Rhodes and Dan Herrmann, [both former executives at Fays Drugs,] the company employed 40 people. We were relying then mainly on letterpress with a couple of flexo machines. (Letterpress is the mechanical process of printing that Johann Gutenberg invented in 1452. Flexography is a modern version of letterpress that utilizes a flexible relief plate and can print on a wide variety of substrates. The first flexo press was patented in 1890.) We began replacing the letterpresses with flexographic presses in the late ‘80s. Dan retired in 2000, and five years later, Peter decided it was time to sell the company. In 2005, we evaluated how the company was organized and how to improve its profitability. Rather than sell the business to an outsider, we spent a year studying the option to create an employee stock-option company (ESOP). The ESOP was established in 2007 with 100 percent of the stock owned by the employees.”

Rhodes sold the company to the ESOP in November 2007.

The year before setting up the ESOP, the company embarked on making process improvement the major focus.

“We totally changed our thinking about how to operate more efficiently,” recalls Alaimo. “The company, which became ISO-certified in 1997, pursued lean-manufacturing concepts through the use of Kaizen events, utilizing multi-level personnel to attain continuous improvement. We committed to lean manufacturing in 2006 in order to promote flexibility, reduce changeover times from 90 minutes to 40 minutes, improve our quality, and reduce our costs by reducing waste. The staff developed quick-changeover techniques and standardized our work procedures to ensure a consistent product. We set up teams to ensure efficiency and speed in the production process. In adopting lean manufacturing, we soon discovered that we needed fewer people to produce the same volume of work. In fact, we eliminated the third shift because of our efficiencies and cross-training. The company also focused on going green by eliminating chemicals from our waste stream, installing closed-loop cooling systems, and recycling wherever we could. I think adopting lean manufacturing was our biggest challenge, because it required a tremendous cultural change. Now it’s a key reason for our continuing success.” In 2007, Alaimo became the company president, and the following year adopted the d/b/a to reflect that the company did more than just print labels.

SLSP has come a long way from Roscoe Towne’s operation in his garage. Today, the company manufactures from a state-of-the-art plant with 60,000 square feet of space, plenty of room to expand, and a huge capital investment in modern equipment. SLSP employs 88 people, and The Business Journal estimates its annual sales at about $20 million.

“SLSP has grown its sales steadily at 5 percent to 6 percent [compounded] annually,” Alaimo asserts. “Our growth has all been organic, and I think that’s because of the employees, some of whom have been 35, 40, even 45 years with the company. We even have multi-generational employees. My mantra is to work smarter, not harder. Working smarter includes cross-training the staff. For example, press operators know how to work on multiple platforms, giving us the ability to shift our producers to meet demand. I also give … [kudos] to our management team: Paul Roux, VP development; Kevin Ekbom, VP manufacturing; Kevin Gagnon, VP production; Mark Howard in graphic services; and Peter Rhodes, chairman.”

Alaimo was a journalism major, who, after graduation, was unable to find work in her field. She started in 1981 with Syracuse Label as a bookkeeper. In time, she advanced to office manager and, in 1986, assumed the role as VP of operations. Her experience in scheduling production taught her how to run an efficient operation. “My style of leadership is to insist on integrity in everything we do,” says Alaimo. “That applies to the employees, our vendors, and certainly our customers. I also prefer working collaboratively — in teams — because it brings different ideas to the table from those who are most knowledgeable about their operations. I think it’s critical for a leader to be a good listener and a good communicator. That’s why we hold a quarterly plant meeting to share with all of the employees how well we are meeting our metrics. These sessions are like town meetings where everybody participates and they help to promote a supportive culture. When it comes to our customers, my approach is simple: Make it easy for them to do business with us. Finally, be prepared to embrace change, because the only constant in this business is change.”

After all of the recent changes at Syracuse Label, Alaimo says it’s time to settle down. “We need to fine-tune the operation,” she stresses. “We’re planning to bar-code our inventory and expand our vendor-managed fulfillment process. It’s time to buy the front-end software that will tie into our back-end manufacturing software and create a seamless system. The flexible-packaging market is showing great potential for growth, so we need to focus more on this area. All of these changes will help us live up to the concept of surround printing. We print products that wrap around [i.e., surround] our customers’ products. The concept also suggests we surround our customers’ challenges by providing our expertise, competitive prices, quality products, quick delivery, and a single source for our customers’ printing needs.”

The new printing plant goes a long way to making Syracuse Label and Surround Printing a one-stop shopping center.

Gaetano Construction
Gaetano has been building commercial buildings for more than a half century. “What was unusual about this project was the compressed timetable,” says Rob Munson, Gaetano’s project manager. “The company had just six months to prepare the site and build a Butler building with 52,000 square feet of warehouse and production space, plus an additional 8,000 square feet of conventionally built office space, or pay liquidated damages. The facility required ceilings reaching to 27 feet and included special features such as several large bridge cranes, two new loading docks with dock levelers, LED lighting, a special humidification and misting system, and several, large curtain-walls to allow for natural lighting. Gaetano began work on May 9, 2016, and met our goal a week ahead of the deadline. Considering the tight schedule and the fact that at times there were 70 to 100 workers on site at the same time, the project went smoothly.”

In 2015, the Onondaga County Industrial Development Agency (OCIDA) passed a resolution approving Syracuse Label and Surround Printing’s (SLSP) application for a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes (PILOT) and certain other exemptions. In its final form, the 10-year PILOT exempted $975,474 on the new building, which included $525,474 in property taxes, $400,000 in sales tax on construction materials, and $50,000 for the mortgage-recording tax. According to SLSP’s president, Kathy Alaimo, the company paid $190,000 for the 6.9 acre site. The total project, including the acquisition of new machinery and equipment, construction, and soft costs totaled $10 million. OCIDA agreed to issue $6.6 million in bonds for the project. M&T Bank holds the mortgage on the property.

“One reason the project went so smoothly was the sub-contractors,” continues Munson. “Brosch Mechanical (of Liverpool) handled the plumbing, [the Syracuse office of] Weydman Electric wired the building, TAG Mechanical (of Syracuse) installed the HVAC, Vitale Companies (of Auburn) did the site excavation, Ron Wright Construction (of Hamilton) was responsible for the interior work including dry wall and studs, and ABJ Fire Protection (of East Syracuse) installed the sprinkler system. The team also included C&S Companies (of Syracuse) as the architects; Paragon Masonry; Ward Steel for the structural steel; Gitzen Companies for the wall panels; CSM Tile and Carpet Wholesale for the floor finishes; B.R. Johnson for the doors, curtain walls, and windows; and Commercial and Residential Painting for both the interior and exterior painting. It was a great team, and they all worked together.”

Munson cites a second reason for the project’s success. “Kathy Alaimo and her staff were really well-organized and very easy to work with,” he adds. “This really helped to keep us on schedule … Syracuse Label is the company’s third Butler building constructed in Onondaga County, but it’s our first major construction project here.”

Charles Gaetano started out as a masonry contractor in the 1950s. He expanded into building and construction services, and in 1960 founded Charles A. Gaetano Construction Corp. Today the company does general contracting, construction-management, and design-build for clients in the fields of health care, industry, commerce, government, and multi-unit housing. Gaetano acquired the Butler Manufacturing franchise for pre-engineered steel building for Oneida, Madison, and Herkimer counties in 1982 and added Onondaga County in 2014. Over the past 35 years, the company has completed more than 3 million square feet of design-build projects utilizing Butler products. Today, Gaetano Construction employs 24 office staff, 18 project superintendents, and 30 to 70 field staff. Its current annual sales average between $50 million and $60 million.

Munson earned his bachelor’s degree from Utica College of Syracuse University in business administration and construction management. He joined Gaetano as a project manager in 2002 and is an accredited LEED green associate. John Foster was the superintendent on the SLSP project. He has worked at Gaetano for more than two decades as a superintendent.