At a time when the news is filled with stories of
long-established companies going under or filing for bankruptcy, one
Cincinnati-area business is weathering the economic downturn just fine,
and moving into new, bigger digs.
Pak/Teem,
an engineering, manufacturing and design firm, is turning 20 this year.
It’s celebrating by moving to a larger facility in Woodlawn. The new
location, on Glendale Milford Road, is between I-75 and I-275 and sits
on 5.17 acres. It has more than 16,000 sq. ft. of office space and
nearly 50,000 sq. ft. of manufacturing area. The Woodlawn building is
more than two-and-half times bigger than Pak/Teem’s original space in
Sharonville.
“Indeed, we are feeling very good,” said Pak/Teem Engineering
Operations Manager Thomas Mayne. “We’re seeing a steady workload at a
time when the housing industry has gone bust.”
Pak/Teem was founded in 1989 by a group of veteran engineers
from the consumer products manufacturing industry. The company has a
staff of over 60 engineers, designers, and technicians with backgrounds
from a variety of manufacturing business sectors. Pak/Teem’s focus
areas include industrial ventilation, material handling, packaging
systems integration, custom fabrication and machining.
Pak/Teem
is in the process of moving into its new location and should be fully
operational by the end of May. The company has steadily grown since
then expanding in Sharonville, at 11500 Rockfield Court, before the
recent move.
“(Sharonville) had been our home predominantly since our
founding. We were one of three tenants at first, and through the years
we had grown to take up the entire building,” Mayne, who’s been with
the company 19 years, said.
In 2007 Pak/Teem bought Air Filters & Equipment LLC
(AF&E), a filter manufacturer and media supplier based in Rock
Hill, S.C. It added more than $2 Million in revenue and 17 employees to
the company.
The new building will allow the company to be more efficient,
better keep up with demand through more manufacturing space that can
accommodate new products, and offers a better shipping setup than the
previous building, Maybe said.
“In addition, as a company we’ve begun developing products. We
have a history of engineering and manufacturing, but we have begun
developing some product lines and some can get quite big. We found we
just needed a bigger space, he added.
The products they’ve developed evolved from custom products they manufactured to deal with specific client needs. Those include local exhaust products and central vacuum cleaning accessories. They also install this and other equipment.
“We can develop our own product and have more control,” Mayne said.
The company has been able to do well in the current economic
climate also by catering to a wider variety of customers, including
more affordable types of products. More customers are seeking top value
in what they buy, and Teem/Pak is there to offer it, Mayne said.
“Our target market is the consumer products industry; we’ve
typically focused on large consumer products manufactures. But we’ve
been working more with food manufacturers, both large-scale and smaller
scale,” he said. “People are still buying product but they are
selecting more affordable options. We offer various products to those
manufacturers.”
Also fueling the company’s growth is demand for controlling combustible dust, due to new federal regulations.
“OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) has an
increased focus on control of combustible dust in manufacturing. That’s
spurred some growth for us,” Mayne said.
Pak/Teem isn’t yet adding new workers, and is waiting for more vigor to return to the economy before doing that.
“This space will allow us some additional expansion capacity for
the future. At this point we’re going to hold labor steady. With
current economy we’re going hold back a little bit,” he said.
Writer: Feoshia Henderson