Triumph Sheets is Schwarz Partners’ new leader in triple-wall
Triumph Sheets, one of the most recent additions to the Schwarz Partners sheet feeder family, opened in October in Cleveland, Tennessee. The plant is the home of the only 132-inch triple-wall corrugator in the United States.
In just six months, thanks to its mighty corrugator and well-trained team, the plant is already achieving astonishing production rates. In one 12-hour shift, Triumph produces what some plants produce in a day. “We run 44,000 lineal feet—three truckloads—per hour,” says Triumph General Manager Bobby Hunter, a 30-year corrugated industry veteran. Bobby, who’s proud of the plant’s 94% uptime stat and 98% on-time delivery rate, is eager to add a third shift to the startup plant. “We have lots of capacity here,” Bobby says. He’s happy with those numbers six months in and expects them to improve dramatically.
Triumph’s location expands its potential. Strategically located to partner with several other Schwarz Partners facilities, Triumph sends half of its current output to two facilities less than 40 miles away: The Royal Group’s Dalton Box and Container Services, a New-Indy Containerboard plant. Triumph’s relationship to the Catawba mill, just five hours away by truck, is literally “a good fit,” John Schwarz says. The mill’s long, wide sheets line up perfectly with Triumph’s large-format corrugator, “which makes both the mill and the corrugator efficient.”
GOOD BONES
Triumph Sheets, a “repurposed asset,” was once an underused distribution center. At the time of purchase, the 360,000-square-foot building needed work, and its circa 1971 railroad link hadn’t been used for 15 years. “To say the site looked like a beat-up Chevy would be an understatement,” says Jeff Schwarz. “Now, it’s a Cadillac.”
To achieve that transformation, the city of Cleveland and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development provided infrastructure support. And Schwarz Partners engineers, including Barry Sharesky, Jerry Alderman and Donnie Smith, provided a vision.
Renovation was completed in just five months. “First, the building was deconstructed,” Bobby says. “They got it down to four walls, put the corrugator in, then built it back up.” The renovation involved lots of scrubbing, chipping and painting, and all the interior spaces, including offices, were built from scratch. The existing rail line, which was too light to accommodate the wide rolls, was also rebuilt. A unique feature of the plant is the conveyor belt that leads to the shipping department, which descends to a different building on another level. “It’s the longest conveyor line in the Schwarz Partners family,” Bobby says.
STARTING WITH THE BEST
All that’s pretty remarkable, but if you ask Bobby and Plant Manager Elvir Bilajac what’s really special about the plant, they’ll tell you about the people. So will Jeff Schwarz. “One reason this startup was so good is that we had a number of employees transfer from other Schwarz Partners plants,” he said. “Where in the past we might have had three people on our staff who became part of the team, at Triumph we had nine.”
“Our first wave of new hires helped with cleaning, painting and some setup, which helped cultivate a sense of ownership within the group. As Triumph grows, you can feel our employees’ pride growing, too,” says Sara Healey-Piloczewski, customer service manager. Triumph currently employs 72 people, 63 of whom are local. When it adds a third shift, the plant will create 24 additional jobs.
CULTIVATING TALENT
Hiring from within the Schwarz Partners family helped speed up the training process. So did help from other Schwarz Partners plants. “I give a lot of credit to Alliance Sheets,” Bobby says. “Our first wave of employees took a bus ride up to Bristol, Indiana, and stayed for 10 days with the Alliance team to do hands-on training on their machines. Our second-wave group got hands-on training on our machine,” Elvir says. For some workers who are new to the industry, training takes a couple of weeks. Other jobs take four to six months to learn well.
Part of what makes the plant so successful is its supportive atmosphere, Elvir adds. “People come in and they want to do a good job. There are lots of opportunities.” Elvir, who began his career on the plant floor, has a good understanding of the employee experience. “I’ve done every job they do,” he says. “I can help them get past hurdles, and they appreciate that.”
STEADY AND READY
Starting up a new plant is tough and doing it during a pandemic is even tougher. But the Triumph team has “built a lot of confidence with our customers,” Bobby says. Triumph has managed COVID-19 by following protocols shared with other Schwarz Partners plants. So far, employees are healthy, and the only impact was a slight dip in the plant’s volume in the spring. Bobby and Elvir want to make their plant the go-to supplier in their local market and a top-producing plant in the Schwarz Partners family. Whatever the future may hold, Triumph is well positioned to succeed. “The triple-wall market is a good place to be right now,” Jeff says. “Triple-wall boxes are traditionally used to ship produce, heavy industrial items and durable goods such as furniture—and furniture is a perfect example of an industry that could quickly come back.”
When it does, the Triumph team will be ready.
