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Paper Trail: CT office-supply business imports Israeli product

Dave Shulman

MIDDLETOWN – The Boycott, Divestment and Sanction movement may have taken root in some parts, but Dave Shulman is doing his part to support Israeli industry. The owner of Suburban Stationers in Middletown just started stocking copy paper manufactured in a little town near Haifa.
Shulman grew up in Worcester, Mass., the grandson of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who owned a supermarket. After marrying a Hartford girl, he worked in the drugstore business in southern Connecticut until 1979, when he started the Suburban Stationers office-supply company in a former Hallmark card shop in East Hampton. Now based in Middletown, Suburban serves clients throughout the state.
The Shulmans are active at Congregation Adath Israel in Middletown, where they do volunteer public relations for the congregation.
Several months ago, Shulman was approached by a sales representative from American Israeli Paper Company (AIP), a manufacturer based in Hadera, a small town between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Not only was the AIP’s copy paper better priced than similar products from domestic companies, Shulman says, but it was also higher quality and featured 96 brightness, rather than the standard 92.
“We tried the paper for four months and were so satisfied that we’re now carrying it, with our private label,” he says.
AIP is part of Niyar Hadera, or Hadera Paper Group, established in 1951 by a group of American investors seeking to create an independent Israeli industry that would replace import. The company established a single-machine paper plant in Hadera in 1953, the first in Israel. The slogan created for the inauguration ceremony was, “Torah will spring forth from Jerusalem… and paper from Hadera.”
AIP is a public company whose shares have been traded on the NYSE Amex Stock Exchange and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange since 1959. Through its subsidiaries, the company manufactures and sells a broad range of products, including a variety of printing and writing paper, packaging paper, corrugated-board containers and packaging for consumer goods, household consumer products, hygiene products, and other disposable consumer products
In 1969, AIP built a paper-recycling plant and developed technology to remove ink from used paper. The company continues to focus on the recycling of waste paper, cardboard, and plastic, alongside the manufacture of products utilizing advanced recycling technologies. Last year, the company began operating a new production line for the manufacture of recycled packaging paper, made from 100-percent paper and cardboard waste.
The paper ships from Haifa to Newark, N.J.; each ream wrap proclaims “Made in Israel.” Shulman says that his first order comprised 10 containers, which should hold his customers for two months.
“This is a great way to get money back to Israel,” says Shulman, who is promoting the product with special pricing to institutions, agencies, and organizations within the Jewish community throughout Connecticut.

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