By Brenda Flanagan
Correspondent
The brand new, million dollar machine at Diamond Chemical automatically lines up bottles. slaps on labels and fills them with a green restaurant-grade dish washing soap called “Dazzle”.
“It’s a bottling line that’s very automated, and it enables us to put soap and detergent in bottles at about 80 bottles a minute, which for our industry is quite fast, and keeps our costs lower,” said Diamond Chemical President Harold Diamond.
The containers roll along a conveyor that packages boxes of four and then sends the boxes to the palletizer, which stacks them for shipment. The company ships 25 truckloads a day.
But this 85-year-old family-owned business in East Rutherford needed a tax break in order to sink a cool million into high-tech mech. They got one. Congressman Bill Pascrell pushed to extend Section 179 of the Tax Code — a business tax deduction that was set to expire.
“If I’m Diamond a year ago and I’m thinking of investing a million dollars in my business, I want to know what it’s going to cost me in taxes before I put one dime into the business,” Pascrell said.
The deduction lets businesses take the full depreciation deduction of purchased items in the current tax year up to a half million dollars. That’s a depreciation they can appreciate.
“This bill allows companies like Diamond Chemical to write off a good portion of their investment on equipment, and that’s incredibly important for small businesses today. It’s the kind of boost that we need. And from my area in the Meadowlands, we have hundreds of small companies right here that need this kind of incentive,” said Jim Kirkos, president and CEO of the Meadowlands Regional Chamber of Commerce.
Manufacturing businesses like Diamond Chemical say they really can’t raise prices on detergent that much, but they can boost profits by making and bottling that detergent more efficiently.
“Obviously, being automated and being able to compete is very important for U.S. companies. That’s why we need to buy the equipment to invest in our facilities,” Diamond said.
The tax write-off is a boon for hundreds of small New Jersey businesses, 14 percent of which have 250 or more employees. Pascrell says the little guys don’t shelter earnings overseas.
“I want to help this guy. I don’t want to help big corporations that screw the American public, day in and day out,” he said.
What Diamond saves in tax payments, the company plans to reinvest, creating more jobs. The soap company hopes to clean out the competition.