Quebec manufacturer of cleaning products gives customers labels they can trust.
Unica Canada Inc. president and owner Sylvain Arama proudly poses alongside some of the commercial and institutional cleaning products manufactured by the company at its production facility in Boucherville, Que.
Cleaning up after others can be a thankless job, but for Unica Canada Inc. in Boucherville, Que., it’s been a rewarding and often a lucrative way to make a decent living.
Since opening its doors in 1965, the family-owned company has risen through industry ranks to become one of the leading Canadian manufacturers of industrial and commercial cleaning products such as hand creams, antibacterial lotions and other sanitary and hygienic product commonly found in commercial buildings, offices, factories, hospitals and other public institutions.
Selling directly to distributors of office and sanitary supplies for commercial and institutional enterprises, the company’s ever-growing product
portfolio includes cleaning solutions for floor-care, windows and mirrors, hand-washing, odor control and carpet care, general cleaning, and kitchen and bath-care applications.
The newly-purchased Vivo! Touch digital color label printer from QuickLabel Systems enables the Unica plant to print its own high-quality color product labels via the system’s LCD touchscreen control panel.
Along with a wide range of skin-care products—such as mechanic waterless hand cleaners, protective creams, antibacterial gels and foams, lotion soaps, etc.—Unica also manufactures its own proprietary Unicafoam system dispensers and cartridges, pumps and drum pumps, which are often custom-designed to the customers’ strict specifications and requirements.
To top it off, the company also produces a range of different soap formulations for laundry, as well as various cleaners for domestic and industrial dishwashers, ovens, vehicle exterior and interior surfaces, and the exteriors of trucks and boats.
“Our company is all about innovation, which is why we have evolved our product line to specifically address the cleaning needs of particular industries,” explains Unica president and owner Sylvain Arama.
Hands On
Originally operating under the name of Savons Unica, the company founded by Arama’s father quickly became known for its high-quality hand
soaps that could get out the toughest grease and grime, becoming a big hit with professional vehicle mechanics.
When Arama joined the firm in 1979, he brought in some new ideas and a vision for the company, and upon assuming leadership of the business after his father retired 10 years later, he began to expand Unica’s product lines and changing its focus to specialize in the manufacture of creams, antibacterial products and sanitation products, including the introduction of a whole new line of eco-friendly sanitation products in 1999 dubbed Bionature.
“For us, it was important for us to provide our customers with greener alternative cleaning and sanitation products,” explains Arama.
The Unica plant markets over 100 different product featuring crisp and colorful prduct labels produced ondemand by the Vivo! Touch digital color printer boasting 1,200-dpi resolution.
In 2001, Unica built a new 25,000-square-foot facility to better respond to customer needs, but the company soon found its success to be a tad
overwhelming, prompting it in November 2009 to begin construction of an addition of another 19,000 square-feet to the existing building.
Today operating out of an environmentally-certified, 44,000-square-foot manufacturing facility employing 25 employees, the Boucherville plant
mostly caters to Canadian-based customers interests, according to Arama, with only about two per cent of its business currently done in the U.S.
Says Arama: “I believe that we have distinguished ourselves as an industry leader by our spirit of innovation, combined with our state-of-the-art
automation in a modern, environmentally-certified manufacturing plant, with our rigorous quality control measures guaranteeing that our clients
will only get high-performance products.”