ELBRIDGE — Tessy Plastics Corp. didn’t take very long to outgrow a new building at its headquarters complex. The plastic component and packaging manufacturer is almost ready to break ground on an expansion of its 90,000-square-foot “south” building at 488 Route 5 in Elbridge. That building, which is one of three on Tessy’s campus at […]
ELBRIDGE — Tessy Plastics Corp. didn’t take very long to outgrow a new building at its headquarters complex.
The plastic component and packaging manufacturer is almost ready to break ground on an expansion of its 90,000-square-foot “south” building at 488 Route 5 in Elbridge. That building, which is one of three on Tessy’s campus at that address, was completed in 2010.
Crews are slated to break ground on the addition in November. The expansion will add nearly 100,000 square feet of warehouse space that is necessary after Tessy took on new work, according to its president and CEO, Roland Beck.
“In order to do those new projects, we’ve encroached on our existing warehouse space,” he says. “We need to make up for that.”
Beck does not want to name the specific customers Tessy is working with on the new projects. But he notes that half of the new work involves manufacturing medical products and the other half is making consumer products.
Tessy currently employs around 820 workers in Central New York, about 100 of which are temporary. But it expects to make 40 of those temporary employees full time in the next few weeks.
And it will continue to add employees as its sales grow, Beck says. The south building’s new warehouse will likely require 30 new employees once it is open, he says. Construction could be completed as early as June.
“I don’t have exact numbers,” Beck says. “We grow about 10 percent a year, so we add on fairly steadily.”
Beck projects 10 percent revenue growth again in 2012. Tessy’s Central New York operations generated about $180 million in revenue in 2011, while the company tallied about $220 million between its New York locations and sites in Lynchburg, Va. and Shanghai, China.
Tessy’s other Central New York facilities include a 206,000-square-foot “west” plant and an “east” plant of approximately the same size at 488 Route 5 in Elbridge. The company also operates a 270,000-square-foot warehouse and assembly facility in the town of Van Buren. That facility, the former Syroco, Inc. building on Route 48, had been strictly warehouse space until this year.
Building the new warehouse on the south building in Elbridge will cost between $5.4 million and $8 million, according to Carl Hulett, Tessy’s director of maintenance. The company will finance the expansion with funding from M&T Bank. Syracuse–based VIP Architectural Associates, PLLC and VIP Structures, Inc. are set to design and build the addition.
It will include some energy-efficient features, like low-energy lighting and motion sensors that switch lights on and off. That’s keeping with an emphasis on energy efficiency in the south building.
The facility has energy-efficient injection-molding machines, high-efficiency chillers for air conditioning and process chilling, and water-economizing heat exchangers that allow Tessy to shut down its chillers during colder months. It also has water-cooled air compressors that reject heat to the building’s heating system to offset heating requirements.
Constructing the building and its energy-efficient features cost about $15 million, Hulett says. Sources of funding included Tessy’s cash, M&T Bank financing, and a $978,000 incentive from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority’s (NYSERDA) Industrial Process and Efficiency Program.
“We estimate they’re saving approximately 50 percent over and above what they would have if they built that conventionally,” says Samuel Cosamano, president of IPD: Engineering of Syracuse, which helped to design the facility.
NYSERDA estimates show the building saves about $800,000 in energy costs annually, according to Stacey Sabo, a senior project manager at the authority. It saves over 8 million kilowatt-hours a year, she adds.
“The incentive is performance based,” she says. “So it’s based on actual savings.”
Tessy hasn’t signaled whether it plans to work with NYSERDA on the south building’s warehouse expansion. But NYSERDA is hoping to drum up corporate interest in its programs at the NEXT technology and innovation conference on Nov. 8 at the Holiday Inn Syracuse-Liverpool.
“NYSERDA was looking for a venue for us to present program information and to engage industrial manufacturing customers in Central New York,” Sabo says. “NYSERDA does have the capability of working with large industrial companies on very complex process projects.”
Contact Seltzer at rseltzer@cnybj.com