James E. Hammer wins RIT Entrepreneurial Award

-- Converting Magazine, 5/13/2008

James E. Hammer, president/CEO of Hammer Packaging (www.hammerpackaging.com), is the 2008 recipient of Rochester Institute of Technology’s (www.rit.edu) Herbert W. Vanden Brul Entrepreneurial Award. The annual award goes to a successful business leader who has positively impacted the local economy with innovative management skills that have also changed the course of an existing business.

Hammer became president of the family-owned company in 1983. Since then, the company has invested more than $100 million in new equipment and seen its sales grow from $4 million to $90 million annually in 2007 and its employment from fewer than 20 people to more than 400.

RIT Saunders College of Business dean Ashok Rao says, “Jim Hammer is an unusually creative and innovative individual. He has survived and prospered in a very tough business environment by identifying niche opportunities, taking calculated investment risks and growing new ventures in those niches”.

Established in 1912, Hammer Packaging, headquartered in Rochester, NY, is a privately-held multi-color packaging printer of sheetfed offset, web offset and flexographic packaging. Core products include cut & stack labels, in-mold labels, shrink sleeves, roll-on shrink-on labels, roll-fed labels, pressure-sensitive labels and flexible packaging.