Knowlton's Not Your Ordinary Paper Maker

CNY Business Journal (1996+), Jun 16, 2000 by Walters, Jolene

WATERTOWN - The employees at Knowlton Specialty Papers in Watertown will tell you that paper is not just for printing. Knowlton makes the type of paper with which one can vacuum one's home, sand a piece of wood, or freshen the smell inside one's car. However, the company originally did produce writing paper and paper for book-making.

Knowlton Specialty Papers is the second oldest continually operational paper manufacturer in the United States. It was founded in Watertown in 1808 by George W. Knowlton and Clark Rice. After almost 200 years, the Watertown mill still stands on the original premises.

Rather than stationery papers, Knowlton creates paper media for other products, such as vacuum-cleaner bags, engine paperfilter cartridges, nonasbestos friction papers, and the "Christmas tree" air freshener. Among its chief products are papers for filtration and friction elements.

Ten years ago, Knowlton was only generating between $3 million and $4 million in yearly revenue, according to Fred Condino, Knowlton's vice president of business development. Today, the plant in Watertown and its sister plant in Utica, Knowlton Nonwovens, together bring in roughly $30 million in yearly revenue, he says. The Utica mill was bought in 1994 from ChrisCraft Nonwovens, according to Condino.

The company, which is privately owned, was bought in 1987 by its current CEO, Franklin D. Cean.

Cean received a B.S. in paper science from the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry in Syracuse; he has worked in the specialty-papers business ever since and for Knowlton since 1965. Cean started out working in the laboratory at Knowlton, and climbed through the company's ranks.

The company has customers throughout the world in countries such as Canada, Japan, and France. Knowlton also supplies paper media for the three major auto manufacturers in Detroit-Ford, General Motors, and DaimlerChrysler. Most of the product travels via tractor-trailer to customers in North America. However, products destined for overseas markets are shipped by tractor-trailer to ports in Montreal or New York City, and then loaded onto ships and sent abroad.

With no competitors in New York, Knowlton does most of its advertising through brochures, and also on its Web site.

Currently, the company's two plantseach roughly 100,000 sq. ft. in size - employ more than 150 full-time workers. The company's research and development facility is up to date, says Condino, so that Knowlton can make a customer's concept a reality.

A lesson Cean says he has learned through doing business is that service is key, and that product quality should always meet and exceed the customers' expectations.

Knowlton's research and development facility includes a 1,000-sq.-ft. media and composites development laboratory,

where new specialty papers go through a "brainstorming" stage. Those concepts then are sent on to the 700-sq.-ft. performance test lab. "Knowlton has the capability to work with the customer to create the product they want," says Condino.

Each plant specializes in different types of paper development and production. Each also uses different production techniques to create a variety of papers. The Utica plant produces papers using a needie-punch process, and papers made at the Watertown plant are created through a wet-laid process.

The needle-punched papers are created through a mechanical entanglement of fibers. Wet-laid papers are produced by diluting and mixing all the ingredients together, then running the resultant mixture through a paper machine.

Some finished products, or composites, contain as many as 40 ingredients. Friction papers, for example, contain cellulose and synthetic fibers, fillers, and a binding element, which are then saturated with a resin and dried.

Knowlton takes pride in the fact that it is ISO-9001- and QS9000-certified, says Condino, which means that the company meets worldwide standards in specialty paper production techniques.