North American Tapes to begin expansion project

A local hockey tape manufacturer will soon begin an expansion project that was delayed while the company waited to become the first business to take advantage of Jefferson County’s Foreign Trade Zone status.

Darrin R. Prance, owner and president of North American Tapes, said Wednesday the 19,200-square-foot expansion will start in either early May or June and will take about two months to complete. The addition will include a new converter room and shipping area at the specialty-tapes manufacturing facility on Fisher Road in the Jefferson County Industrial Park. It will add seven to 10 jobs to its work force of 21.

“It’s almost the exact project we proposed before,” Mr. Prance said.

North American Tapes, which dubs itself the No. 2 hockey tape manufacturer in the world, includes the Comp-o-stik product line, used to wrap hockey sticks, and PerforMed for sports-related injuries.

Getting the Foreign Trade Zone status will save the company money in duty tax payments on material it uses to manufacture the hockey and athletic tape. The company also will not have to pay duties on products made in the United States and exported to Canada and Europe.

Mr. Prance has been waiting to get the Foreign Trade Zone board to rule on the designation since it applied last year. The Textile Industry Trade Association, however, raised some questions and opposition to the status, claiming it would cost some U.S. jobs.

David J. Zembiec, deputy chief executive officer of the Jefferson County Industrial Development Agency, said the Foreign Trade Zone Board has started the review process for the new application.

“There were also some technical errors on the application that we’ve worked out,” he said, adding he hopes the board will approve it in the spring.

His agency has been working on the application with the support of Democratic U.S. Sens. Charles E. Schumer and Kirsten E. Gillibrand and U.S. Rep. William L. Owens, D-Plattsburgh.

Without the status, North American Tapes is now at a distinct disadvantage with Canadian specialty tape manufacturers, Mr. Zembiec said. If it gets the status, North American Tapes could increase its Canadian sales by about 40 percent, Mr. Prance said.

Representatives of North American Tapes also recently went before the Watertown Planning Board about the company’s plans to start the expansion project.

The Planning Board gave the go-ahead, granting the company a waiver on going through the site plan review process a second time because it’s nearly the same project as had been proposed, said board member C. Randy Vaas.

The company is contemplating just one change to the original project: whether the new building will have a separate sprinkler system or be connected to the existing system, Mr. Prance said.