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Description
Cohoes is a small city about 10 miles north of Albany, the capital of the state of New York. Like most former mill towns in the quiet regions of the country, Cohoes could use some economic resuscitation. The community holds out hope these days for revival if plans for big nanotechnology developments come to fruition in the next year or two. But overall, it's a quiet place, and beautiful. Two mighty rivers, the Hudson and the Mohawk, have met at Cohoes for centuries.
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Macaran Printed Products, however, is not representative of the city of Cohoes, even though it has called the town home for many years. Macaran is a label converting business that has seen steady growth since its founding about 35 years ago, and today is growing at a pace higher than the average growth rate of label converters in North America. Its management is not satisfied with the status quo, and continues to explore new ideas and technologies to improve performance, quality, service, and the bottom line.
Macaran is the offspring of Van Alstine & Sons, a distributor of packaging materials and products founded in 1950 by William N. Van Alstine. His sons, William Jr. and Robert--Bill and Bob--took over after their father died in 1952. Bill, the president, brought his son Nick Van Alstine into the business in the 1970s, at a time when the company was taking a major turn. So he launched Macaran Printed Products, a flexo label print shop, and gave it his mother's maiden name.
"Dad had always wanted to get into manufacturing, because he found that whole prospect interesting," says Nick Van Alstine, now president and owner of both Macaran and Van Alstine & Sons. "Our first press was a Mark Andy 810, a three-color central impression press, and there were only three of us in the shop: Dad, me and Walter, the maintenance guy. In those days it was fun because I was young and didn't know any better. I remember we got a job from General Electric. It turned out to be kind of a complicated label. It was only three colors, but each of the colors had a vignette, a gradation from 100 percent down, which is still difficult today. And, oh man, did we struggle with that thing. My dad told them it would take... |
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