Floating In A Sea Of Boxes
The bevy of big name box builders and packers make for big business in the tiny town of Portland. Home to 9,000 people, the packaging industry employs hundreds here.
Pharmagraphics, for instance, has one of its five facilities in Portland, where it makes folding cartons and labels for pharmaceuticals. Smurfit-Stone Container Corp., one of the world’s larger box makers, has a manufacturing facility that employs more than 100. Standard-Knapp, which has more than 65 employees and makes the equipment that packs boxes inside of factories, is headquartered in Portland.
So it’s somewhere in that shadow of those bigger brethren that B&B Equipment has found its niche. The 12-person manufacturing firm has called Main Street home for the last 15 years. But it began more than 30 years ago in Middletown, when an engineer by the name of Stanley Bankowski — who had recently left the short-lived remanufacturing division at Standard-Knapp — decided that there was a good market for rebuilt box-making devices and struck out on his own.
He set up shop and began remanufacturing and rebuilding the devices made by other manufacturers. Soon after, he created his own line of box packaging equipment. Along the way his family got very involved in the business, and his two sons, Peter and Stephen, eventually took over.
“People don’t realize the amount of effort that goes into making just one jar of mayonnaise or a bottle of something,” Peter Bankowski said. “There’s so much process and complicated tasks involved.”
Today, B&B products touch much of the food and liquor that most people probably have in their homes. Every bottle of wine made by Gallo Wines at some point is handled or packaged by a piece of equipment designed by the company in Portland. So is much of the beer brewed by Anheuser-Busch or the condiments made by HJ Heinz.
And the Bankowskis, raised in Portland, also say that operating their business in Portland is a sign of pride for them. “I’m proud of it, and I want to be here,” Peter Bankowski said.
That’s why he jumped at the chance to move the business to Portland in the mid-90s, when he took over the former site of Anderson Oil on Main Street. He quickly turned it into a single-site, 55,000-square-foot industrial park, which now houses eight other businesses. Among them: Physician Laser Services, which rents laser equipment to doctors, New England Welding, a welding company, Ultimate Marine, a boat repair company, and in an ironic twist Standard-Knapp Credit Union.
Having created a thriving business is just as much a source of pride as providing spaces — boxes, if you will — for other businesses to thrive, Peter Bankowski said.
“I love this town,” he said. “I am here by choice. And I want to promote what I know and where I come from.”
Contributing Writer Ken St. Onge blogs about manufacturing in Connecticut at NutmegMachine.com
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