AP&G ramps up investments in equipment, people and intelligent pest management solutions

Jonathan Frisch, left, with Chris Ernst, at AP&G’s new facility PHOTO: MARTY WHITFORD

AP&G has changed a lot more than its headquarters address. Prompted by years of steady sales growth, AP&G’s move in 2016 from Brooklyn, N.Y, to Bayonne, N.J., enabled the company to place its operations under one roof — and streamline, automate and expand manufacturing.

In Brooklyn, AP&G had four buildings comprising 190,000 square feet, but only used 110,000 square feet. At its 180,000-square-foot Bayonne facility, AP&G is using 50 percent more manufacturing and storage space. Before the move, AP&G formulated adhesives a few blocks from its main plant. Today, AP&G formulates on-site, and its adhesives flow directly to production lines through overhead pipes.

Now settled in its new digs, AP&G continues to ramp up its investments in equipment, people, and intelligent pest management solutions, including:

• Adding three glue board manufacturing lines.
• Bolstering its roster from 100 to 160 employees.
• Recruiting Dr. Stan Cope (aka “Stan the Mosquito Man”) — a retired U.S. Navy medical entomologist and Terminix International’s former director of entomology and regulatory affairs — to serve as vice president of technical products and services.
• Promoting Ed Dolshun (aka “Big Ed, Chief Trapping Officer”) to vice president of business development and technical director.
• Hiring Chris Ernst (aka “The Beard”), a seasoned ad agency account director, to serve as AP&G’s director of brand strategy.
• Launching the Ovi-Catch AGO Mosquito Trap: Proven successful in testing by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, this solution features Catchmaster glue boards with an AP&G adhesive specially formulated to catch female mosquitoes during breeding cycles.
• Developing Catchmaster Catch Zone: 60-foot-by-12-inch “pest boundary rolls.” Ideal for warehouses, food production and storage, as well as supermarkets, Catchmaster Catch Zone quickly and cost-effectively protects large areas and pallets from mice and insects.
  

  An AP&G employee fills an order, wearing the company’s GLUECO core values T-shirt. AP&G was founded in 1952 to produce specialty adhesives, and introduced the Catchmaster brand in 1977. PHOTO: MARTY WHITFORD

“Moving to Bayonne from Brooklyn wasn’t easy. My grandfather, Moses Frisch, founded AP&G in Brooklyn in 1952. But it was necessary to accommodate our steady sales growth and ever-expanding family of Catchmaster solutions,” Jonathan Frisch, AP&G’s vice president of sales and marketing, tells PMP.

“We completed the complex relocation while accommodating double-digit sales growth,” Frisch says, adding that the team’s “can-do attitude throughout our move, and subsequent expansion, helped us pen our new GLUECO core values,” as follows:

• Go Beyond Expectations
• Laugh
• Unstoppable
• Energized
• Customer Centric
• Ownership Thinking