Following the approval of New York State and Monroe County incentives, Xerox has chosen Webster for its planned expansion of global toner production capacity. The project means an additional $35 million investment in the emulsion aggregation (EA) toner plant in Webster, NY.
“As a global manufacturer of toner, we considered options around the world, but tax abatement incentives from the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency and a grant from Empire State Development contributed to making Webster the most cost-effective location to build additional manufacturing capacity,” said Richard Schmachtenberg, senior vice president, Consumables Development and Manufacturing for Xerox.
Xerox will construct two additions to its Webster plant, increasing the size from 100,000 square-feet to 155,000 square-feet, and will add about $26 million in EA toner manufacturing equipment.
The expansion will start in August with completion expected in February 2015. The additional manufacturing line will create about 25 new jobs over time, consisting of process operators, quality control, lab personnel and additional maintenance staff. The project also would generate about 70 full-time construction jobs.
According to InfoTrends, between 2011 and 2016 production digital color toner-based pages will grow at a 9% compound annual growth rate, exceeding 300 billion pages globally by 2016, which for Xerox, means greater demand for the chemically grown toner used in Xerox printers and production presses.
Developed by Xerox and protected by more than 300 patents, EA toner produces sharper images using less toner per page. Unlike traditional toner, which is created by physically grinding composite polymeric materials to micron-sized particles, EA toner is chemically grown enabling the size, shape and structure of the particles to be precisely controlled. This leads to improved print quality, less toner usage, less toner waste and less energy required for manufacturing and for printing. Xerox and Fuji Xerox have designed around 50 office and production printing products that use EA toner.
The current five-story plant, which opened in 2007, is one of only a handful of its kind in the world. It features more than 25 miles of pipe and stainless steel tanks and includes more than 9,000 sensors that track information about temperature, humidity, air flow and other variables.
Xerox has invested $100 million in the plant in original construction and upgrades. This would be the first additions to the original structure.
About Xerox
Since the invention of Xerography 75 years ago, the people of Xerox (NYSE: XRX) have helped businesses simplify the way work gets done. Today, we are the global leader in business process and document management, helping organizations of any size be more efficient so they can focus on their real business. Headquartered in Norwalk, Conn., more than 140,000 Xerox employees serve clients in 160 countries, providing business services, printing equipment and software for commercial and government organizations. Learn more at www.xerox.com.