Blair Best Box finds success at former Thorngate building

A building that was an empty eyesore in the center of town for two years is now home to a booming new box business.

Blair Best Box is creating custom paper packaging for a number of national clients at the former Thorngate Ltd. facility on Independence Street where it's made a $2.5 million investment.

Boxes for video games and DVDs, three-ring binders and folders -- all individually designed and recyclable -- are now being produced at a rate of up to 10,000 sets a day.

The push to "go green" is creating a desire for paper-based packaging from both consumers and companies.

"The demand for recyclable packaging is where the trend seems to be going," said Blair Packaging and Blair Best Box president Ron Unterreiner.

Carmen Rodriguez works to assemble video game boxes as they move through a semi-automatic box maker at Blair Best Box in Cape Girardeau on Tuesday, Aug. 16, 2011. (Kristin Eberts)

When Blair purchased the Thorngate Ltd. building in January, Unterreiner said he expected to hire 30 employees by the end of this year.

Unterreiner already has about 30 full-time employees, and another 35 that have been working on an as-needed basis depending on customer orders.

Beginning next week, about 65 people will be working on an order for video game manufacturer Activision. The boxes made will be sent across the U.S., and to London, Germany and Austria.

He hopes by the end of next year that his business will have stabilized enough to have all 65 employees working full-time, all the time. While he would not disclose an average hourly wage, all full-time employees are eligible for health insurance, Unterreiner said.

Many of the workers he's hired had been out of work for quite some time, he said.

"The production people are all brand new, never been exposed to boxes before, so we've had to train everybody," Unterreiner said.

Blair is part of an upward trend in Missouri manufacturing in 2011, with 197 new manufacturing businesses established so far this year according to the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

From December 2009 to July 2011, seasonally adjusted manufacturing employment has increased by 13,400 jobs to 254,900, a 5.5 percent increase, said John Fougere, spokesman for the Missouri Department of Economic Development.

Statewide, the largest part of the manufacturing increase has been in the durable goods sector. Employment in durable goods has increased by 12,400 jobs, or 9 percent since its December 2009 low.

Blair Box did not receive any state economic development incentives, but the City of Cape Girardeau did grant the company a Chapter 353 10-year property tax abatement totaling $369,398 and it obtained a $165,000 low-interest loan from the Southeast Missouri Regional Planning and Economic Development Commission's revolving loan fund. The Bank of Missouri also provided financing, Unterreiner said.

So far, most of its boxes have been for CD and DVD packaging. Blair had a sizable client base after making vinyl packaging for VHS tapes during the 80s and 90s, Unterreiner said, and now these customers want more paper packaging.

Unterreiner also hopes to branch out to make packaging for other products in the near future.

"We're quoting pretty heavily right now in the health and beauty industry with larger cosmetics companies. We hope to start on that doing packaging for perfumes and creams, like Estee Lauder or Loreal," Unterreiner said.

He also hopes to do get into the high-end alcohol packaging business, making boxes for fine wines and whiskey.

"Since we're right here in the Midwest near all this, it would be kind of a natural for us to do all this," he said.

There are a number of steps to assembling the custom boxes Blair makes, some done by hand and others done by machine.

"A lot of things have to happen to a box. It's got a base, it's got a collar, it's got a lid, sometimes it gets vacuumed formed trays put in it. We make those at our Scott City plant,"

Customers send in printed sheets that are then cut and wrapped around boxes assembled at Blair. Hot stamping, silk screening, debossing and embossing is all done at the company. Currently, the boxes made are shipped out and filled with products elsewhere, but in the future, Unterreiner said they could do product fulfillment on site.

The first several months of this year were spent renovating the building, including its 6,000-square-foot office area with new carpet, paint, ceiling and lighting. It took about two months and $200,000 just to reroute the building's electrical system to get power to the right places and set up more than $1 million worth of new equipment, some of which was shipped to Cape Girardeau from Italy.

Initially the company will use about 65,000 square feet of the 170,000-square-foot facility, leaving room for expansion.

Unterreiner, a Perryville native, moved Blair Packaging from Chicago to Scott City in 1980. The Scott City facility has ramped up its production this year and added new employees as well, with about 30 people currently working there full-time.

Mitch Robinson, executive director of Cape Girardeau Area Magnet, said Blair box had the opportunity to go to other states, but Unterreiner was committed to staying here.

"A great aspect of the Blair Box project was their move into a vacant industrial property," Robinson said. "We market these available buildings very hard and they are often very good buys compared to building new."

Sometimes, existing buildings present challenges depending on the size or weight of a company's equipment, he said.

"Blair Box was able to move into this existing building and make their layout work with the building," he said.

The Thorngate building had been vacant since early 2009 when its more than 300 workers were laid off and the men's clothing factory closed.

mmiller@semissourian.com

388-3646

Pertinent address:

1507 Independence St., Cape Girardeau, MO