May 13, 2008

Safeway Packaging

Club members were treated to a tour of the recently opened Safeway Packaging plant on the West side of town in the Bunker Hill Industrial Park,  President Kevin Manor, Vice President Keith Kemper and Sales Manager Mark Wilson split the group and conducted tours through the plant as they described the various aspects of the operations.

Prior to the tour, NB Mayor Jeff Pape presented Kevin Manor with a plaque officially marking the opening of the business and a welcoming of Safeway to the NB business community.

Safeway recently relocated the new facility when it consolidated operations from Minster and Sidney.  The 260K sq-ft facility is now the company's main operation site and they operate a subsidiary in Caledonia Michigan.  The facility houses administrative, sales, engineering, design, testing, manufacturing and distribution of corrugated packaging product.  They have incorporated state of the art equipment and operations where possible however some operations are labor intensive due to size limitation of some existing equipment.

Safeway currently employs 125 people with 30 office personnel and they operate on a 2 shift basis at present.  The company was started by Kevin's father back in 1984.

Kevin applauded the village administration in their efforts to assist in site planning and in making the 8 month ground breaking to move-in possible.

For more information on Safeway Packaging, follow this link.

Hosting Rotarian:  Craig Hirschfeld