Ebb and flow of industrial park

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ITD Corporation employee Vick Ambrose pushes a cart across the company’s warehouse at 80 Rado Drive in the Naugatuck Industrial Park. The company, which creates support systems for medical technology, moved from Prospect into the industrial park in July to expand its business. –LUKE MARSHALL
ITD Corporation employee Vick Ambrose pushes a cart across the company’s warehouse at 80 Rado Drive in the Naugatuck Industrial Park. The company, which creates support systems for medical technology, moved from Prospect into the industrial park in July to expand its business. –LUKE MARSHALL

NAUGATUCK — As one company prepares to leave the Naugatuck Industrial Park, others have been busy securing their own spots.

Yogurt producer and distributor YoCrunch, which is currently based in Naugatuck, will be expanding to a 70,460-square-foot facility at 80 Rado Drive.

Naugatuck Economic Development Corporation CEO Ron Pugliese said YoCrunch has signed the contract and is expected to move into the building in January 2015.

Currently the building is occupied by Coca-Cola, which has used that location for bottling and distributing since 2000.

Earlier this year Coca-Cola announced plans to move toward a cross-docking loading practice, which involves unloading products from an inbound trailer and loading them directly onto outbound trucks with little or no storage in between. Its current location was not suited for this use.

Pugliese said the borough worked to try to find a new location in Naugatuck for Coca-Cola, but could not meet the company’s needs.

“We’re not happy about Coca-Cola moving out. We would have loved to been able to retain them and accommodate YoCrunch as well,” Pugliese said.

YoCrunch currently has four locations in Naugatuck. Along with its main office at 141 Sheridan Drive, the company has two locations on Spring Street and one on Rado Drive.

Pugliese said the company plans to consolidate all of its operations into the facility at 80 Rado Drive and one of its locations on Spring Street.

The company began consolidating its operations earlier this year. In April the Board of Mayor and Burgesses approved a lease agreement for YoCrunch to park its trailers in the General DataComm parking lot, colloquially known as Parcel B.

The agreement allows the company to park up to 20 trailers on the property at any time.
Pugliese said he expects the agreement to come to an end when YoCrunch moves into the new building.

A message left with YoCrunch seeking comment was not retuned as of this post.

By the time YoCrunch settles into its new location, The ITD Corporation will have already been in the industrial park for months.

The ITD Corporation moved to a 22,000-sqaure-foot facility at 50 Rado Drive in July. Prior to its move the company had been located in Prospect since 2006.

ITD North American Sales Representative William Miller said the company manufactures support systems for medical device manufacturing companies, including carts that medical devices are placed on in hospitals.

According to Miller ITD is the market leader for these products in Europe.

The company, which was founded in 1995 in Munich, Germany, has four locations around the world. The Naugatuck location is the only one in the United States.

Miller said the company moved to the borough because it needed a larger building.

“We outgrew the building in Prospect and this building met our needs nicely. So we decided to make the move,” Miller said.

Since its move the company has already added one new position and is hoping to add more.

Miller said the property on Rado Drive stood out partly because it was close to the company’s prior location, making the transition easier for customers and employees.

According to Pugliese the building that ITD moved into was the former Pennsylvania Steel building.

“They’ve done an extremely good job of renovating that portion of building,” Pugliese said.

Miller said the company has updated the electric work, the telephone system, and brought an employee from the parent company in Germany to do the information technology work.

Pugliese said the move by the two companies into the Naugatuck Industrial Park is a positive for the borough.

“Those are both very positive signs of things we are trying to accomplish here,” Pugliese said. “It is one of the best industrial parks in the state. It is very well run, clean, and we have a lot of good business up there.”

According to Pugliese A Better Way Auto, a Naugatuck-based car dealer that used to park its cars on Parcel B, is working with the NEDC to find a home in the industrial park as well.

“We are very happy with the momentum we have going now,” Pugliese said.