Unisource Brings Paper, Packaging, and Cleanliness to Bay Area Businesses

By George Walsh, Hacienda Network Staff Writer

Whenever you perform the little pleasurable tasks in life like reading a newsletter or washing your hands away from home, you may not take the time to wonder how the paper got to the printer or how the got to the restroom. The answer to this questions and others can be found at Unisource, right here in Hacienda.

Unisource is a marketer and distributor of commercial printing paper, industrial packaging, and facility supply products with approximately fifty years of experience in bringing their wares to the doors of businesses in North America. "We're a $6 billion plus company that has divisions in every market in the country," says Steve Topor, general manager of Unisource in Pleasanton. "Wherever there's a large population base, there's probably a Unisource division, which we define as a facility that has a building, a delivery fleet, and a sales force. Pleasanton is one of the 100 plus Unisource divisions and we serve the entire greater Bay Area." The Pleasanton division of Unisource has roughly 250 employees in a 400,000 square foot facility at 4225 Hacienda Drive.

"We basically serve three separate business segments," Topor says. "We sell and deliver paper to commercial printers like newspapers. The second segment relates to the type of industrial packaging that is used in business-like corrugated boxes, and plastic film that would be used to create retail packaging or wrap boxes on a pallet. The third group is what we call facility supplies. Those are products such as bathroom tissue, hand soap, trash can liners, and all the chemicals that are used to clean hospitals, manufacturing plants, schools, and ballparks. We offer all the things that a facilities manager needs to maintain a building." Local clients for paper supplies include KP Printers, Amp Printing, and American Litho. Packaging customers include Mervyn's, Nordstrom's, Long's Drugs, and See's Candy. In the facilities segment, Unisource serves Intel, Kaiser Permanente, UCSF, the Oakland Coliseum, and Stanford and Berkeley Universities.

According to Topor, the decision to place their Northern California facility at Hacienda was driven by the Park's access to highways 580 and 680. "We service customers as far down as Monterrey, and we serve San Francisco, the Peninsula, and even as far north as Santa Rosa. We've got as many as 50 trucks going out a day and they'll travel as far as 75 miles from our facility, so being close to major highways is important for us, so that we can get in and out quickly."

Unisource, whose corporate offices are located near Atlanta, Georgia, has over 8,000 employees that include over 3,500 sales, customer service, and technical support specialists. The company maintains approximately 17 million square feet of inventory capacity in North America and stocks over 150,000 different commercial paper, business paper, imaging supply, packaging supplies, and facility supply and equipment products. Due to the company's size, it also has access to thousands of additional products to fulfill its customers' specific requirements. In addition, Unisource has over 2,000 company-owned and operated trucks in the US.

Photo: Warehouseman Francisco Cervantes stocks a pallet of paper in Unisource's immense Hacienda facility.

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