By GLENDA ANDERSON,
THE PRESS DEMOCRAt
While many businesses are struggling to survive, a little known manufacturer in Ukiah has been running 24 hours a day, up to six days a week to keep up with demand.
"2010 was a phenomenal year," said Jon Henderson, executive vice president of business development at Maverick Enterprises, a 96-employee company located just east of the Ukiah city limits. Employees have been working long weeks to keep up with a spike in demand for its product, the decorative capsules that sheath the tops of wine and spirits bottles."They're a hard-working, dedicated group," Henderson said of employees.
Maverick was the first of three Ukiah-area companies to delve into the commercial bottle-capsule business. Two others — Sparflex, a French-owned company started by former Maverick employees, and G3 Enterprises, a Gallo company — are located just north of Ukiah.
Since its inception in 1992, Maverick has become the largest company in North America to produce capsules from start to finish in one facility, Henderson said. The process begins with press operators feeding rolls of "polylam" and PVC onto rotogravure printing presses, and ends with completed capsules that are formed in capsule converting machines.
The company was opened in 1992 by Charlie and Nancy Sawyer. Charlie Sawyer previously helped establish and oversee Fetzer's in-house bottle-capsule production. He launched his own business after the Fetzer family sold its name and business to Brown-Forman, Henderson said.
Maverick started out with four employees and one capsule-making machine. During its first year, it produced more than 22 million capsules. It's now owned by Riverside Company, a private equity firm based in Cleveland, with 14 production lines that can manufacture 22 million capsules in just nine days, Henderson said. This year it expects to produce 685 million capsules for the wine, distilled spirits and food industries, he said. The wine industry accounts for 94 percent of its business, and most of its products wind up on moderately priced bottles of wine.
After two lackluster years, Maverick's business jumped this year as wine drinkers shifted to less expensive wines in response to the failing economy."I don't think wine sales are picking up that much. I think that people are scaling back what they're buying," said Mark Stern, senior project manager at the Mendocino Winegrape and Wine commission.
Maverick makes two kinds of capsules, one made of polyvinyl chloride and one comprised of polyethylene sandwiched between aluminum, called polylaminate or polylam in industry terms. The PVC capsules are the least expensive to make, followed by the polylam. Both are considerably less expensive than solid tin, which typically is used on wines priced more than $10 to $20 a bottle. The polylaminate capsules, which most closely mimic tin, cost customers about $40 per 1,000, while tin costs about $150 per 1,000, Henderson said.
In response to the surge in sales, Maverick in October purchased equipment from a now defunct capsule maker in Australia.
The equipment will allow the company to produce another 300 million capsules a year and increase its workforce.
As it grows, Maverick is once more looking at changing hands. New investors, who cannot yet be named, have nearly sealed a deal to take over the company, Henderson said. They plan to infuse it with enough capital to again increase production, which may include a new facility, he said. The company is quickly outgrowing its 40,000 square foot facility.
"The potential is enormous now. These truly are exciting times for Maverick and its employees," Henderson said.
Source: THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
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