SUN Automation Group Celebrates 35 Years Of Growth And Success
From small backyard barbecues to the fifty-yard line of the Baltimore Ravens M&T Stadium, the employee-owners of SUN Automation Group have had countless opportunities to celebrate SUN’s growth and suc- cess in its three-and-a-half decade journey. What began in the basement of a small townhouse in northern Baltimore County, Maryland, has grown into one of the most well-respected equipment and product develop- ment companies to serve the global corrugated industry.
Packaging ERP Algorithmic Scheduling Web-Based Access Online Customer Portals
Paperless Workflows Mobile Sales Systems Digital Signage Production Monitoring Mobile Logistics Management Analytics & Reporting Cloud Hosting IT Management Services Cyber Security Management
600 + Plants 60,000 Users North America Latin America
SUN was founded in 1985 by corrugated industry veterans Lou Sar- della and Pat O’Connor with a mission to provide innovative corrugat- ed-industry product solutions. Sardella, who passed away in January of this year, was an engineering giant who held 17 patents, most notably for SUN’s Extend-O-Feed, the company’s keystone Lead Edge Feeder technology triumph. Many in the corrugated industry consider Lou the “Godfather of Lead Edge Feeders,” as he was instrumental in developing the design for Ward, Staley, Prime and most notably, SUN’s Lead Edge Feeder. The SUN Lead Edge Feeder is still considered the industry’s best, with more than 11,000 installations, and counting, at box-making facilities around the world. Building on the success of this hallmark and under Sardella’s engi- neering acumen and leadership, SUN developed a myriad of corrugated market innovations in the years that followed: Spectrum Color Unit, Mi- croGrind Anvil Trimmer, ColorMaster Blade System, and popular retrofit solutions like SunTrac Vacuum Transfer and SunSet Control Systems. The company officially gained OEM status in 2012 with the introduction of the SUN625 Rotary Die Cutter. But it was in 2001, that the game really changed when SUN took a strategic gamble and bought the much larger Langston Corporation, a venerable 100-year-old corrugating institution that was in bankruptcy, doubling the company’s size. “Purchasing Langston was probably the most important milestone for SUN to date -- not only because of its size, but because we were its supplier for so many years,” recalls SUN Automation Group’s President Chris Kyger. “It changed the way the industry saw SUN and changed the way SUN saw itself. We weren’t the little guys anymore -- we were purchasing the big guys.” Nearly three quarters of the company’s 150-member-strong global workforce, many of them shown above, have been with SUN for more than 15 years.
CONTINUED ON PAGE 16
14
www.boardconvertingnews.com
June 15, 2020
Made with FlippingBook Online document