Spurred by a growing caffeine-fueled world, Urnex Brands Inc. has moved from Yonkers to a 55,700-square-foot manufacturing facility in Elmsford. It has also begun selling an environmentally friendly Full Circle line of coffee and espresso cleaning products at Williams-Sonoma retail stores nationwide.
“We think of ourselves as a company that helps people make better-tasting coffee,” said Joshua Gordon Dick, president of Urnex, the family business he joined in 2000. “We work closely with a lot of different companies around the world to help figure out how to maintain their equipment in a way that is really different, specialized and niche.”
Urnex began first as Royal Urn Bag Co., a maker of cloth coffee filters and aluminum rings for urns in Manhattan”™s East Village in 1936. The company had most recently been located on Ludlow Street in Yonkers, where it had been based since 1989.
The commercial specialty coffee market accounts for a majority of Urnex”™s business. Its foray into consumer products was motivated in part by a more knowledgeable coffee-drinker with changing consumption patterns.
“We”™ve also seen with the economic situation that there”™s more at home coffee consumption, which is one of the reasons we launched a brand like this to help people making their coffee at home have all of the proper tools to take care of it,” Dick said.
Urnex also sells under Urnex Brands a line of home-cleaning powders, liquids and tablets at retailer Bed, Bath & Beyond.
At Urnex”™s new Elmsford facilities, dozens of workers label boxes and bottles on a conveyor line. In a separate room in the warehouse, shelves are lined with cardboard boxes for shipping. There is a kitchen filled to the brim with every coffee and espresso maker on the market for test purposes. A science lab of sorts is where the product development occurs.
“It adds an additional value to our customers because we always invite our customers to come and see us and they enjoy being able to see the plant working ”¦ it helps bring us closer to our consumer base,” said Deborah Rebell, director of marketing.
Before making the move from Yonkers to Elmsford last month, Dick said the company had looked in neighboring Rockland County and farther north in the Hudson Valley before settling on 700 Executive Boulevard.
“The landlord did some creative things to help us move in and the geography is good for some of the core management team,” Dick said. “The space was nice and had good proximity to the highways.”
The website is urnex.com.
