Packaging manufacturer going strong after 50 years

COMMACK, N.Y. - When it comes to mixing work with family, Bill Beyer Sr., the founder and CEO of Beyer Graphics, wouldn't have it any other way. His sons, Bill Jr. and Dan, grew up learning from the best.

"Some families don't get along as you know but we do," Beyer Sr. said.

The company started out in Brooklyn in 1967 manufacturing tags for the garment center. They moved to Long Island in the 1980s and later transitioned to folding boxes. Today they're one of the largest suppliers to provide packaging for major pharmaceutical, vitamin, cosmetic and apparel companies.

"You would see them in Macy's, you would see them in Bloomingdale's, you would see them in CVS, Rite Aid," Beyer Jr. said.

The company manufactures six days a week, 24 hours a day and has 125 employees. They work out of a more than 70,000-square-foot space in Commack producing upwards of a million cartons per day. Of that, they recycle close to 500,000 pounds of material a year.

"Paper gets imported into Long Island via rail car. Rail is actually very important because we're bringing in 6,000 tons of board in every year," Dan Beyer, the president, said. "We bring that it in rolls, it's sheeted first down to sheets to feed into the printing press, the printing press will go through and apply all the graphics and specialty coatings. It'll then go into our stamping and cutting facilities. Final process could be window patching and we also do folding and gluing for all of the cartons."

Inside the ink lab, custom colors are matched and prepared for the press. There are hundreds of thousands of choices. Red is actually the most commonly used color.

Machines can print up to nine different colors at a time. Prices start at a few cents a box and can go up to $5 or more depending on the luxury market.

Beyer is international. It has offices in Central America and Hong Kong where they manufacture packaging for companies like Fruit of the Loom. The company does millions of dollars in sales each month.

"It's important to me that we can manufacture and compete with people out of state in a similar business," Beyer Sr. said. "We figure we're as good or better because I have a lot of great people working for me."

"Most jobs for graphics—you have to go into the city," Tara Colao, a marketing employee, said. "I don't have to pay for that commute."

And she doesn't have to sit in that traffic, either.