By Paul Post
Morcon Tissue’s move from Eagle Bridge to a larger Greenwich site is expected to accelerate already fast-paced sales that have grown from $20 million to $125 million annually since 2013, when President and CEO Joseph Raccuia purchased the firm.
Morcon buys large rolls of paper—more than eight feet wide—from domestic and overseas suppliers and converts it into disposable napkins, towels and tissue for the away-from-home market, which includes restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals and sports arenas.
It recently secured contracts to supply all Applebee’s and IHOP restaurants across the U.S., as well as AMC Theatres and half of all Dunkin’ franchises.
Morcon is moving into 90,000 square feet of leased space at a former Essity paper company facility that Fort Miller Group purchased earlier this year.
“It just gives us room to grow,” said Raccuia, former president and CEO of both Finch Paper in Glens Falls and South Glens Falls-based SCA Tissue North America. “We’ve got an excellent workforce. If we moved any more than 15 or 20 minutes from that Eagle Bridge facility, we ran the risk of losing employees. This allows us to retain them and pull more from other places such as Schuylerville, Saratoga Springs and Moreau. It gives us more hiring options.”
Morcon began using its new site for storage and warehousing on July 1. Plans call for moving machines there in January.
Essity vacated its Greenwich converting facility in July 2023, at the same time its South Glens Falls paper mill closed, eliminating 300 jobs.
Morcon tried to buy the 230,000-square-foot Greenwich building, but Essity refused to sell to a competitor.
Fort Miller Group bought it for $4.5 million, despite being outbid by Morcon.
Fort Miller Group purchased the building to consolidate operations for two of its four subsidiary firms, Access Anvil Corp. and TYMETAL.
Access Anvil specializes in overhead doors, fence and gate installation, and the Scott System, which makes urethane formliners, concrete formwork and thin brick inlay systems for the construction industry.
TYMETAL is a leading manufacturer of perimeter security systems, including commercial, industrial and correctional gates, and crash barriers.
Access Anvil was previously located on Route 9 in Glens Falls and in Greenwich. “Now they’re all together in the same location,” said Rick Schumaker, Fort Miller Group director. “That’s the main reason for buying the building. It’s in spectacular shape. We didn’t have to do much at all. We renovated the offices and moved Access Anvil in right away.”
Likewise, TYMETAL is continually expanding, so the former Essity building gives it room to grow, too, he said.
Fort Miller Group also owns Fort Miller Precast, which manufactures precast concrete infrastructure for highways, bridges and utilities, and FM Service Corp., which makes burial vaults.
The group’s four companies employ 580 people.
After Access Anvil and TYMETAL moved to the former Essity plant, there was still a great deal of vacant space, which Morcon is now leasing.
Morcon buys paper on the open market from U.S. suppliers and others in Canada, Mexico, Indonesia, Turkey and Italy. About 80 percent of the paper it buys is recycled. The rest is virgin grade, mostly from fast-growing trees such as eucalyptus found in warmer climates.
“The U.S. is the number one user of disposable napkins, towels and tissue per capita,” Raccuia said. “This is the place everybody wants to come to sell paper. There’s plenty of opportunity for us to buy and convert paper.”
Morcon’s corporate headquarters are at 18 Division St., Saratoga Springs, where it employs 22 salaried workers. The converting operation has 48 hourly employees, and plans call for adding eight to 10 jobs there by the middle of next year.
In addition to upstate New York, the company has a converting facility in South Carolina. Paper purchased from overseas arrives in containers by ship, off-loaded in New York or Charleston, and trucked to converting plants.
Converting machinery cuts large rolls into finished products.
Raccuia said Morcon is finalizing plans for a warehouse in California and is also considering Texas.
Morcon’s Eagle Bridge facility is already listed for sale.
“I’m hoping that someone recognizes its potential,” Raccuia said. “It’s a beautiful building. If it’s not sold by the second quarter next year, we’ll use it to store paper or finished goods.”
Raccuia’s career in the Glens Falls-Saratoga region began more than 30 years ago, when he was named chief executive officer to lead a turnaround at the former Encore Paper Co. in South Glens Falls.
Encore was purchased by SCA Tissue in 2001, and Raccuia became president and CEO of SCA Tissue North America, leading the business to more than $1 billion in sales.
In 2009, he decided to stay closer to home and crossed the river to join Finch Paper in Glens Falls as president and CEO. He purchased Morcon four years later.
SCA Tissue was renamed Essity in 2017. In 2023, it ceased operating in upstate New York and Arizona and shifted all paper-making to Wisconsin, Kentucky and Alabama.
Essity is a competitor of Morcon’s, but Raccuia said he had bittersweet feelings about the South Glens Falls mill’s closure because that’s where he started out locally.
Essity has refused to sell its properties to another papermaking company. “That prohibits a lot of people from doing anything with it,” Raccuia said.
Similarly, Lehigh Hanson cement company refused to sell its Glens Falls plant to a competitor after shuttering the facility in 2023, leaving two large industrial sites vacant with questionable prospects for reuse.