Acme United Corp. has acquired Pac-Kit Safety Equipment Co. for $3.4 million, expanding its line of first-aid kits.
Fairfield-based Acme United sells first-aid kits, school supplies and cutting instruments such as scissors and industrial shears, while also launching last year a line of garden pruners and saws that won several design awards from the Chicago Athenaeum Museum of Architecture and Design.
The company counts as major competitors Finland-based Fiskars Corp. for scissors; and the New Jersey-based giant Johnson & Johnson for first-aid kits.
Acme United had a $2.6 million profit in 2010, increasing revenue 7 percent to $63 million, still short of the nearly $69 million in revenue it generated in 2008 as the economy sank into recession.
At deadline, the company had yet to file its annual report; it entered 2010 with about 135 employees.
Pac-Kit employs more than 30 people in Norwalk and had $5.4 million in sales last year; Acme United expects to increase sales by at least $4 million, while driving up growth across its existing product lines by between $5 million and $7 million. Acme United indicated it expects Pac-Kit to produce between $100,000 and $150,000 in earnings this year, even as it undertakes “operational efficiencies” to improve the bottom line.
Acme United CEO Walter Johnsen said Pac-Kit has been occupying a facility with a rolling lease that renews annually; he did not give an ironclad commitment to keeping the operation in Norwalk, and said he planned to contact Mayor Richard Moccia about what incentives the city can put together to keep it there.
“Our intentions right now are to stay,” Johnsen said. “The taxes in Norwalk are very high ”“ that”™s discouraging. Our plans right now are to build (Pac-Kit”™s operations) in Norwalk, but at some point I would like to meet the mayor of Norwalk and see what we can do.”
Several years ago, Acme United sold a Bridgeport facility that was the site of its original scissors manufacturing operations from 1887 to 1996 ”“ at its peak, the plant employed 600 people. Acme United now performs that manufacturing work in China; in December 2008, the company sold the property to beverage distributor B&E Juices for $2.5 million.
“It was a very sad thing for me personally,” Johnsen said. “We wanted to stay in Bridgeport, but we couldn”™t stay competitive there.”
Acme United has its own headquarters in 7,500 square feet of space at 60 Round Hill Road in Fairfield.
Pac-Kit dates to the late 1890s when it was formed as part of the Burroughs Wellcome Co., which began packaging medicines and wound dressings in cases that found a ready market with both explorers and companies undertaking rigorous field work ”“ particularly AT&T whose workers were stringing cable in remote areas such as the Florida Everglades.
Pac-Kit says Admiral Robert E. Peary was a customer and surmises its kits accompanied Peary on his expeditions to the North Pole; other famous customers included Antarctic explorer Robert F. Scott, as well as Theodore Roosevelt.
In 1946, Burroughs Wellcome spun out Pac-Kit as an independent company; it would go on to help develop national standards for first-aid kits in conjunction with the federal government.
“Pac-Kit was one of the pioneers in that because they had already unitized single packages, and they were already color-coding kits,” Johnsen said.
