Big Business, Served Family Style
Photo/Edd Cote
Catania-Spagna Corp., 1 Nemco Way, Ayer 01432
Pictured are 14 of the 16 family members employed at Catania-Spagna,
which imports and packages oils.
Catania-Spagna Corp. in Ayer is the sort of place that makes you realize just how big the job of feeding America is. Train cars and tanker trucks full of olive and vegetable oil pull up to the facility, where huge hoses empty them out and move the oil around cavernous rooms.
The oil is mixed in different proportions and packed into large drums for restaurants, pretty bottles for retail sales and — mixed with vinegar — little packets of salad dressing for fast food places.
The whole process is modern, immaculate and lean.
But if you look closely at the enormous tanks that hold different types of oil and feed, you’ll notice something distinctly non-industrial. Stenciled onto each of them is the name of a child who once visited the plant with a father or grandfather, perhaps helping out by sweeping the floors.
Today, those same children, the fourth generation of family to work for Catania, run forklifts, make sales and help set corporate strategy for the 90-employee company. Cousins and brothers greet each other on the production floors with updates on the minutia of company business.
Early Start
At 23, William Reilly Jr., a member of that fourth generation, is already a seasoned veteran of the business. From the age of 14, he spent school vacations working there full time, with stints in the warehouse, production and quality control departments. And Reilly, who is now the company’s sales and marketing coordinator, said 11 other “grandkids” have done the same — though the girls started in the office instead of the production floor.
“All of us have worked from pretty much the bottom up,” he said.
“From the bottom up” also describes how the business itself has grown. Reilly’s great-grandfather, Guiseppe Basile, came to America from Sicily in 1900 and started selling olive oil from a one-man office in Boston’s North End. As the business was passed down to Basile’s son and then to his grandchildren, both the size of the operation and the array of products the company sells expanded exponentially.
It’s now part of the largest buyers’ group for olive oil in the country, importing the oil from all over Europe and beyond and packaging it up under both its own label and private labels. It also brings in vegetable oils from the Midwest and packages them for sale around the Northeast. Its brand names, found on supermarket shelves all over the place, include La Spagnola, Marconi, Sicilia and Casa Mia.
Stephen A. Basile, vice president of sales, Reilly’s cousin and the son of CEO Anthony Basile, said the company’s growth has come in spurts, with major upticks in the 50s and again in the 90s, particularly after 1994, when the company moved to Ayer and established new, more efficient processes.
With more than 100 years of history, Catania-Spagna has adopted many standard corporate practices, like lean processes and strict company policies. Basile quotes an HR manager who says, “We’re not a family business, but we happen to be a business that a family works in.”
Still, he says, there are clear differences between Catania and a workplace where coworkers are strictly co-workers.
“It’s nice to come into work every day and work with your family,” he said, but that can also make the workplace a bit more intense than most. “Everyone has a passion for the business. Tempers can flare up a little bit.”
As the country struggled economically over the past few years, Catania’s leaders have been grateful to be in the relatively recession-proof food industry. Basile said the company’s had to reduce its expenses, but it’s been able to do so mainly through some efficiency initiatives that have the added benefit of making the plant more environmentally friendly.
The company’s core olive oil business faces a constant threat from fraud, which is surprisingly prevalent in the oil business.
Reilly said the company will often hear from purchasers who say other distributors are offering them extra virgin olive oil at prices that are clearly too good to be true.
Reilly said one solution to the problem is government regulation, but another is for consumers to become more sophisticated about good tasting oils. Not surprisingly, that’s something he can discuss fluently.
“I have a lot of knowledge of olive oil for a 23-year-old kid,” he said.
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