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New Antioch
Company press keeps jobs in town
The new $3 million six-color offset printing press The
Antioch Company is preparing to install this summer will do more printing
in less than half the time of the old presses, and it will allow the Yellow
Springs facility to keep pace with the company’s growth needs. Keeping
the press in town will also allow all 175 employees at the local plant
to maintain their jobs in the village.
The press, a German-made Man Roland, is the heart
of the operation in Yellow Springs. It will print nearly every single material
produced at the facility. If the press left town, an option which was briefly
considered last year, so would every one of the 175 cutting, packaging and
distribution jobs that support it, local operations manager Carol Gasho
said during an interview Monday.
But keeping the press, the jobs, and Antioch Company’s
presence in town was important to village leaders, who last fall organized
to offer the company a 75 percent abatement over ten years on the increase
in personal property tax from the purchase of the press. In January 2004,
The Antioch Company’s board of trustees approved the decision to purchase
the press for Yellow Springs, and Gasho signed the contract with Man Roland
at the end of March.
“All of Village Council saw the logic and self
interest in securing that investment in town,” Council president Tony
Arnett said Monday. “It’s the first big win we’ve had
in a long time, and it’s one I think the community thought was very
constructive.”
The abatement is solely for the increase in taxable
property, therefore the village won’t be losing any money with the
offer, Arnett said. The village will gain a 25 percent increase in the company’s
taxable base and defer the other 75 percent until later.
Keeping the press in town was also a goal for The
Antioch Company, Gasho said. The 90 skilled workers in Yellow Springs know
their jobs and have increased the percentage of local processing for Creative
Memories products from 9 percent of the company’s Creative Memories
business five years ago to 20–25 percent for the past three years,
Gasho said.
Workers say they weren’t ever worried that
their jobs would go elsewhere, but Mike Boos, the offset press room manager
who helped choose the press, is glad the operation stayed in Yellow Springs.
“My main concern was doing the right thing
for the company,” Boos said. “But obviously I wanted to see
it stay in Yellow Springs. It’s the right place for it to be.”
The Village took the initiative to propose the abatement
and secure a positive endorsement from the Yellow Springs school board to
show The Antioch Company how much the village depends on local business,
Arnett said. The process was proactive and cooperative, and Antioch recommitted
to investing in town.
“We felt the support of the village;
they let us know they wanted us to stay,”
Gasho said.
The Man Roland will replace two 20- and 25-year-old
Heidelberg presses and will provide the capacity to print at one and a half
times the speed with six-color combinations instead of five.
The Antioch Company has made over $6 million in
capital investments in the Yellow Springs facility in the last three years,
said Gasho, including the new press and a new waste collection system that
vents onto Dayton Street. Each investment is a new commitment to staying
longer, Gasho said, and no one wants to try to move a press the size of
a large camper if the move can be avoided.
The Antioch Company has 50,000 square feet of growth
capacity on its current site, and with the new press and waste system, the
local facility is set to keep up with the continued growth of the company’s
Creative Memories business, now grossing $350,000–400,000 a year in
sales, Gasho said.
The Village’s plans to locate a commerce park
at the northwest corner of the village, across from the Antioch campus,
has Gasho, who is also the chairperson of Yellow Springs Community Resources,
thinking about developing synergistically with potential nearby businesses,
she said.
If hotels and restaurants are built, as those at
the recent visioning conference mentioned, she thinks The Antioch Company
might consider hosting weekend scrap-booking retreats for its business consultants.
The larger businesses could cooperate to support ancillary businesses in
the area as well, Gasho suggested.
The ideas for growth are for several years down
the road, Gasho said, but the possibilities are limitless. The Antioch Company’s
recent investment shows long-term commitment to the village, and beyond
that is open to the imagination.
—Lauren Heaton |
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