AUBURN — After a year filled with new equipment and new contracts, Bo-Mer Plastics, LLC is set to end 2014 on a strong note and keep that momentum going strong in 2015, its leader says.

That momentum has actually been building since October 2001, says Thomas Herbert, company president. That’s when he purchased the Auburn–based plastics manufacturer and focused on two main objectives — diversification and controlled growth.

“Things are going very well,” says Herbert, who served as vice president of engineering and general manager of the company before acquiring it from Industrial Custom Products in Minneapolis.

Sales have increased every year since and will rise again this year, he says. Herbert expects Bo-Mer to end 2014 with a sales increase between 3 percent and 7 percent and hopes for the same in 2015. While it might not seem like a lot of growth, it is growth that Bo-Mer has been able to continue to build on every year, he notes.

Bo-Mer’s core business is thermoforming plastic products, primarily covers for medical equipment, for customers including Welch Allyn, Siemens, and Johnson & 

Johnson. The company also makes products for other types of equipment. It counts Xerox among its customers. Bo-Mer even made the orange covers for the army of robots that “staff” Amazon’s warehouses.

Diversification moves
To diversify its business, Bo-Mer acquired two companies in 2010. The first was Marvin Taxi Advertising, Co. of Boca Raton, Fla., which produces carriers that hold advertisements on top of taxicabs. Bo-Mer also acquired Nashua, N.H.–based Rotoplas, LLC, the parent of EarthPlanter, which sells self-watering planters.

Marvin Taxi has been in the process of retrofitting taxis in New York City, and a new contract in Cancun will help grow sales into 2015, Herbert says.

“We just landed Cancun two weeks ago,” he says. Under that deal, Marvin will replace the plastic tops on taxis at a rate of 100 taxis per month for the next 13 months. The tops for the cabs are made by Bo-Mer in its Auburn facility and the company added metal-working equipment this past January to bring in-house the manufacturing of the metal bases for the taxi signs, Herbert says. The new equipment also gives Bo-Mer laser cutting and CNC bending capabilities.

Marvin still maintains a sales office in Boca Raton.

EarthPlanter is now a division of Bo-Mer and its operations are housed in Bo-Mer’s 64,000-square-foot facility in Auburn. Bo-Mer added a rotational molding machine this past spring to help make EarthPlanter more competitive. Rotational molding is used mainly for creating hollow, plastic items such as planters.

EarthPlanter products (earthplanter.com/products/index.html) are deployed at Syracuse University and close to 90 different universities around the country as well as in numerous townships. Herbert says commercial customers have found that using EarthPlanters, which regulate how much water the plants need and when they need it, has saved as much as $20,000 in water and landscaping labor costs annually.

Currently, Bo-Mer employs 48 people and is able to meet the workload for all three companies with that staff, Herbert says. However, “we’re always looking to add people,” he notes. In addition, the company has 17 sales representatives located throughout the United States. 

Bo-Mer has clients throughout New England and the Northeast, down the East Coast and as far was as Colorado.

Headquartered at 13 Pulaski St. in Auburn, Bo-Mer’s primary markets are original-equipment manufacturers of medical, dental, pharmaceutical, and digital-imaging equipment. Bo-Mer is ISO 9001 registered and Underwriters Laboratories (UL) approved.       

Contact The Business Journal News Network at news@cnybj.com