Ashton Potter Security Printers Plans New $3.2M Printing and Storage Facility

WILLIAMSVILLE, N.Y.—June 10, 2015—To better accommodate its growth, Ashton Potter, one of the world’s largest manufacturers of postage stamp products and secure labels, based here, is seeking to build a 55,000-square-foot office, printing and storage facility on the rear portion of the 7.9-acre property at 10 Curtwright Drive, reported The Buffalo News. The location would be located just behind its current 61,000-square-foot headquarters operation on the site at Curtwright and Wehrle Drive.

According to The Buffalo News, plans call for the company to move out of its current leased space and relocate to a new $3.2 million facility. The new 39-foot-tall, one-story building would sit on about 1.5 acres of the overall property, and would also include room for a new 127-vehicle parking lot and a delivery truck loading dock. The building would also have a cinder block base, with metal siding and a metal roof.

"It gives us some expansion in manufacturing and puts the two facilities right next door to each other, so we can have a lot more economies of scale with the operations right next to each other, and some expansion room,” Ashton Potter President and CEO Barry Switzer told The Buffalo News.

Owner of the property, Butch Kreuz of Advantage Global Management, has applied to the Amherst Planning Board for approval of the project, reported the newspaper. If the project is approved, Lamparelli Construction could start the work in the fall, and finish by next summer.

Switzer tells the paper that Ashton Potter handles more than half of all U.S. stamps today, plus all envelopes and cards available through post offices—adding that the company "probably" makes one-fourth of all postage stamps in the world, since nearly half of the world’s mail is processed in the United States.

According to the paper, the company was previously owned by Toronto-based MDC until 2007, and is now owned by a private equity firm that Switzer would not identify. The company currently employs 185 at the two facilities.