Superior Glove Is a World Class Exporter That Embraces Small Town Ontario and Newfoundland and Labrador
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For Acton, Ont.-based Superior Glove, the workforce in Newfoundlander and Labrador has been an invaluable asset to its operations. The company maintains its manufacturing plant in Point Leamington not only for strategic reasons, but also for the feeling of community there.
“That’s also why we’re in Acton, because quite frankly we could look at a big city centre but that’s not what the company’s about and it’s not part of our values,” says Marketing Manager Nancy Laviolette.
“[The people of Point Leamington] are part of our extended family. Our family that are doers. They make it work. They’re self-sufficient, problem solvers – the innovator kind of people that we were looking for.”
Superior also feels invested in the success of the community, not just its employees there.
“We’re in the community, it’s very important for us to extend that beyond just the plant,” says Laviolette. “So we also sponsor the [local] school, especially science-oriented activities.”
The 70,000-square-foot plant will celebrate 30 years in Point Leamington this December. It currently employs 150 people and produces more than 3.5 million pairs of work gloves a year. According to Laviolette, the facility is “the most modern and vertically integrated glove factory in the Americas.”
In fact, one of the company’s main products was made at the Point Leamington plant. The TenActiv cut-resistant glove with black foam nitrile coverage on the palms helped put Superior Glove on the map, says content marketing specialist Matt Burtney.
“That’s what kind of set us on the map was we could make a glove that was so thin but also highly cut resistant,” he says. “What set Superior Glove apart is that we make our own yarn. We combine steel or fiberglass with different cut resistant yarns to make something that is incredibly strong and protective without being too bulky.”
Superior Glove’s history goes back to 1910, when it was called Acton Glove Company. At the time, the city of Acton had the largest tannery industry in the British Commonwealth. In 1961, Frank Geng, the father of current president Tony Geng, bought the glove company and renamed it Superior Glove Works.
Today, the company exports more than 3,500 styles of gloves around the world, with North America and Europe being its largest markets. It is also beginning to enter Africa, the Middle East and Australia.
Superior Glove has a satellite office in Europe and distribution centers in Buffalo, New York, and Edmonton. It’s opening another one in Shreveport, Louisiana. The gloves are made at its manufacturing plants in Acton, as well as Point Leamington and Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador.
“In 1988, [the owners] started looking at Newfoundland and Labrador for a second place to open. They were looking for somewhere that had a good ability to get shipments in and shipments to Ontario, but also, somewhere they could go where they could find a good amount of space,” says Burtney.
Since then, Laviolette said the Point Leamington plant has undergone five expansions with help from the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency. The Agency provided repayable loans for building financing and machinery purchases.
“In November of 2016, we started a new glove factory in Springdale, Newfoundland and Labrador,” says Laviolette. “We now have 23 employees at that factory, on two shifts of production. ACOA was also there for us with the Springdale start up with helping us finance new machinery.”
But Superior Glove also has challenges looking for workers.
“One of the reason why we have to open Springdale a little bit later is exactly that, to make sure that we would get access to a little bit more people,” Laviolette said.
The company continues to actively develop new products. One of the things it’s currently working on is a double-dipped version of the TenActiv glove, generally used by CNC machine operators. To protect workers’ skin from certain oils they work with, the company is adding a second coating to the gloves.
“[Company leaders Tony and Joe Geng] took the basic concept of what put us on the map and then figure out a way to dip it a second time so that it wouldn’t allow for penetration of the oil, but kept that high dexterity that they needed so much,” Burtney says.
“Basically the big thing we’re trying to do is make gloves that are more comfortable, less cumbersome and hopefully get higher level of cut resistance that don’t make you feel like you’re wearing a chainmail or something like that.”
The company is working on other projects and is pushing the envelope in terms of yarn engineering, though Laviolette couldn’t reveal more at this time. But she said the company continues to grow.
“We have been looking at a growth hovering between 15-to-20 per cent year over year,” she says.