New Manufacturing Plant To Help ACME Stay In BK, Company Says

GREENPOINT, BROOKLYN — One of the borough's longest-standing companies will build a new manufacturing plant so it can stay in Brooklyn.

ACME Smoked Fish Corporation plans to start construction on the new plant, if it is approved by the city, this year at its current site in Greenpoint. The expansion will help fish processing and packaging company stay in Brooklyn, where it has been for more than a century, the company said.

“Our dream is to continue to manufacture our products and sustain jobs in Brooklyn for another hundred years, and we could not be more excited about the proposed facility, which we believe will achieve that," CEO David Caslow said.

ACME was founded in Brooklyn in the early 1900s. Since then, the company has built a manufacturing facility in North Carolina and had considered moving there to consolidate, company officials said. But, instead, the company's owners decide to stay in the borough where it began.

"In the end, the family’s attachment to Brooklyn prevailed – despite the high cost of building a new facility that provides room for the company to grow and meets the latest food safety standards," ACME said in a release.

The new plant will expand the company's space to 80,000-square-feet in a new three-story facility.

It will be built by real estate developers Rubenstein Partners, who are also currently developing a office and industrial building at 25 Kent Avenue.

The proposal will use a similar model to the Kent Avenue development, which is just a few blocks from ACME's site. It is expected to start the public review process in the next six months.

“Based on the 25 Kent model, this plan both preserves legacy manufacturing and encourages new companies to grow in New York’s expanding innovation sectors,” said Jeff Fronek, vice president and director of investments at Rubenstein Partners. “Given its history as a long-time manufacturer that helped make Williamsburg and Greenpoint a hub for industry in Brooklyn, we are proud to partner with ACME in this project.”

About 45 percent of the company's employees live in Brooklyn and 82 percent are from New York City. If approved, the new plant will preserve more than 100 of these manufacturing jobs at the site, ACME said.

Photo by Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images.