By TRACEY DRURY
tdrury@bizjournals.com | 716-541-1609

A Niagara County business hopes to expand its reach internationally with a new office in South America.

Katz Americas hired a sales team in Mexico and is exploring opportunities for a facility in the Brazil area, says Frank Muraca, president and CEO.

The company, which makes 1.5 billion beverage coasters annually, already has a major contract in Brazil with AmBev, a division of Anheuser Busch and Brazil's largest brewer. Currently the company handles the contract from its Tennessee facility.

"We're looking to set up a facility in Brazil or the surrounding area to try to service the South American region," Muraca says. "Brazil is a strong, robust, growing economy. We believe a lot of the success we've seen in our early years in the U.S. can be replicated in South America."

Last year it hired a sales force in Mexico, as well as a business-development manager - Claudia Perdomo - to handle South American sales. She is a native of Colombia who earned an MBA at the University at Buffalo. She came to Katz through an internship.

The company was started in 1979 when Muraca's father, Tom, purchased Gardei Manufacturing, a commercial printing firm in North Tonawanda that specialized in labels for grinding wheels. The company had experimented with die-cutting of a heavier board, which Muraca later capitalized on for beverage coasters.

When the microbrewery craze hit and casual dining took off in the 1980s, the company quickly grew. In 1990, he acquired Sanborn-based Bickford Box, which had its own print presses at a site on Lockport Road, where the firm has since expanded to 64,000 square feet. Several more mergers and acquisitions followed, with the company selling off the label side by 2005 to focus almost entirely on coasters.

The company in 2009 became part of the Katz Group, a division of Koehler Paper Group in Germany, the world's largest paper manufacturer. With about 100 employees total, half the workforce operates at the site in Johnson City, Tenn.

Katz Americas is the nation's largest maker of thick board converted products, including primarily coasters of varying thickness and absorption but also used in such products as baseball cap brims, retail packaging and folding boxes.