Xerox plant expansion creates 54 new jobs

Xerox Corp. on Tuesday celebrated the completion of a $35 million copier toner plant expansion in Webster.

The project, which increased the size of Building 216 from 100,000 square-feet to 155,000 square-feet, and added about $26 million in new equipment, will increase the company's emulsion aggregation (EA) toner capacity by 40 percent.

Developed by Xerox, which holds more than 300 patents on the technology, EA toner produces sharper images with less toner per page, according to a news release.

Unlike traditional toner, which is created by grinding materials into tiny particles, EA toner is chemically grown, which enables the size, shape and structure of the particles to be precisely controlled. The process leads to improved print quality, less toner usage, less waste and less energy required for manufacturing and for printing, according to Xerox.

The number of jobs in the plant will grow from 90 today to more than 100 by the end of the year. Total toner jobs in Webster, for both traditional toner and the new EA toner, will reach 182 by the end of the year, including 54 jobs created by the facility expansion. So far, 30 of those 54 have been hired, Xerox officials said.

Xerox and Fuji Xerox have designed about 50 printing products that use EA toner. Rick Schmachtenberg, Xerox senior vice president for consumable development and manufacturing, said the decision to expand the plant in Webster was based on a combination of factors.

"We got incentives from the state and the county that surely helped, but the real reason is local to this area we have a lot of technical expertise that we could leverage and basically utilize to bring this factory to realization," said Schmachtenberg.

Xerox received a $160,000 break in property tax over 10 years from the County of Monroe Industrial Development Agency, Xerox spokesman Bill McKee said. The corporation also got a $300,000 grant from Rochester Gas and Electric, RG&E spokesman Dan Hucko said.

McKee refused to disclose the value of other incentives provided to Xerox by Empire State Development Corporation (ESD), New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), or an investment tax credit from the state Department of Taxation and Finance.

James Gazzale, a spokesman for the Taxation and Finance, said he could not reveal the value of the credit.

"Unfortunately the taxpayer confidentiality provisions in the tax law prohibit us from sharing any taxpayer specific information and the amounts of credits claimed would fall under that umbrella," he said.

Details requested from ESD and NYSERDA were not immediately available.

"We made a huge investment here because this is our latest generation, newest technology. It is what I would call a platform technology toner for all of our new products and future products that we're working on today and will deliver in the not to distant future," he said.

With about 55 percent of the customers for the product in North America, locating the manufacturing plant here means it will cost less to transport it to them.

The construction work was finished in late November 2014. Testing on the new equipment was completed in March, he said.

Construction on the plant addition started in 2013. The project generated about 70 full-time construction jobs over the past 15 months.

BLOUDON@DemocratandChronicle.com

Innovative history: A story and links to databases from October of 2013 when Xerox marked its 75th anniversary: