Web-Cote Industries was started in 1986, in a garage in Newark, NJ by Thomas Spina. Tom had been working in sales for an adhesive manufacturing company that was selling industrial adhesives to major coaters who were then developing products for label converters. One day Tom was selling adhesives to an older customer who had a side business applying adhesives for use with Velcro. He suggested that Tom take over the business, and his entrepreneurial inclination sparked him to say yes. At that time, he befriended Paul Kraemer, who was building specialized coating equipment for unique hot-melt adhesive coating applications. Tom didn’t have the money to buy one of these machines, but Kraemer built him a machine and allowed Tom to pay him back for it when he could. He put this coating machine in a garage in Newark, NJ, and it was there that he started Web-Cote Industries. The name of the company coming from the type of equipment he was operating, a web press, which runs continuous rolls of paper or other substrates, and cote, a play on the spelling of the word coat, which was what he was doing on the web press, coating hot-melt adhesives!

Tom soon partnered with Ronald Grabowski and Zygmunt “Ziggy” Chojnacki, both coming from backgrounds in adhesives and chemistry, and in the early years they were primarily adhesive coating products for Velcro and rat traps. By 1989, Tom realized there was a need for in-line printing and die cutting, in addition to the coating. Ron and Ziggy wanted no part of that, so Tom let them buy him out and he went on to create Luminer Converting Group.

Ron and Ziggy continued Web-Cote Industries designing and manufacturing coated products not commonly available in the market. With their extensive knowledge of hot melt adhesives, they were able to find exactly the right adhesive needed to coat or bond their customers various flexible and semi-rigid substrates, often developing custom formulations. Some of their early products included developing a specialty film for use in oil filters, depilatory tapes, screw seal tape for RV’s and boats, and pantry moth traps.

Move to a new location

A few years later the business moved to Franklin, NJ, where it continued to grow to the point they needed a larger manufacturing facility, and they built our current home here in Hardyston Township, NJ in 1992.

Throughout the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, Web-Cote began attracting more business from the pest control markets, and they started making more types of glue traps, including items such as rodent and insect glue traps, and agricultural items such as fly string for use in barns, etc. At one point, they even tried to market their own brand of glue traps called “Web-Trap,” but that never really took off as most of the customers coming to them wanted to sell their own brand, so we became exclusively a private label manufacturer.

They began supplying a large number of glue traps to the Latin American professional distribution market, as well as producing turnkey product for retail distributors. One of those retail distributors was Roxide International, former owner of the Revenge brand of pest products.

A new chapter

Around 2005 Ron and Ziggy, nearing retirement, began looking for a buyer for the business. James Cowen, the owner of Roxide, caught wind that one of his main suppliers was for sale, so in order to ensure the stability of his current company he began negotiations with Ron and Ziggy to buy them out, and in October of 2006 the company had a new owner, and a new chapter was about to begin.

With Jim coming from a distribution and sales background, not manufacturing, Ron stayed on board for a couple of years to help with the transition, and Susan Masciarelli joined the company in early 2008. Susan was coming from a manufacturing background and was hired to “get all the information out of Ron’s head” before he completely retired. With Jim’s large network of contacts in the pest control world, and Ron and his deep and wide knowledge of hot melt adhesives retiring, it wasn’t long before the company started to evolve away from specialty adhesives to find our niche as a manufacturer of exclusively private label products for the pest control industry.

Web-Cote Today

Web-Cote has worked closely with various adhesive manufacturers over the last decade developing and testing various formulas to stay on top of the current needs of the pest control market. Today, our “bread and butter” products are our glue boards for Insect Light Traps. Our light trap replacements boards are recognized as some of the best in the industry with the highest catch rates and ability to stay tacky under both fluorescent and LED UV-A light for more than 90 days. We still produce plenty of the original glue traps for rodents, moths, spiders, snakes, spotted lanternflies, and agricultural traps too! We have some exciting projects on the horizon and are now looking ahead towards continued growth in the professional market, expanding our private label retail customer base, and delving into more retail and  govenment contracting opportunities.

In 2021 Jim took a step back and semi-retired, leaving Susan, as Vice President & General Manager, to run the company, along with Operations Manager Andrew Kozdron. Fast forward to 2024, and Susan has now purchased the company from Jim, making us a 100% woman-owned manufacturing company. Andrew has been promoted to the role of Vice President of Operations, and they, along with their growing staff, are busy implementing multiple projects aimed at reducing lead times, lowering costs, improving efficiencies, having the ability to offer more options for our customers to save money and ensure product is available on-time, and as needed.

We are proud to produce products that protect the public health, food, and property!