Bonnie Swayze is CEO of Alliance Rubber Co., which was started by her late father, William Spencer, in 1923 in Alliance, Ohio. The company, which today has 175 employees at its headquarters in Hot Springs, Arkansas, has been supplying the seafood industry with rubber products – primarily rubber bands – for the past 20 years.
SeafoodSource: What has been your path to the CEO's office at Alliance Rubber?
Swayze: Growing up, I was always in the factory learning about the family business and the process of making a rubber bands. My father wanted to keep Alliance in the family and taught all of us children every piece of what made the company what it is today. I started working at Alliance in production at 17 and moved my way up to being president in 1986.
SeafoodSource: What specific products does Alliance create for the seafood industry?
Swayze: Alliance has manufactured natural latex rubber bands for use with lobster, crab, clam, oysters, and geoduck seafood for more than 20 years. Beginning this year, we will be adding lobster bands manufactured with high-quality, food-grade silicone rubber. Our bands are made with a special silicone formula that allows the bands to maintain their strength and stretch in both hot and cold temperatures and are FDA compliant for direct food contact. The bands can withstand water temperatures as cold as -47 degrees Fahrenheit (-44 degrees Celsius) for ocean holding tanks or as hot as 450 degrees Fahrenheit (232 degrees Celsius) temperatures for cooking.
Through research, we have found that the location of origin, or traceability, information is increasingly important to this industry. Alliance has the ability to print that information directly on the band with ink that forms an actual bond with the silicone, which helps the ink from never fading.
SeafoodSource: What percentage of your business is seafood industry related? How has that changed over time?
Swayze: The seafood industry presently represents a relatively small percentage of our total business. However, we hope to grow this business exponentially as we move forward with our new silicone extrusion line and custom silicone rubber products.
SeafoodSource: What kind of feedback do you get from the seafood industry about your products and how do you use that information to improve existing items or develop new ones?
Swayze: We receive market research and industry knowledge from our distributors, which allow us to make strides to better serve the needs of the industry. We hope to continue to learn even more information when we attend seafood expos this year.
SeafoodSource: Your company is working on a project using graphene to make bands that gauge time and temperature. How does that work and how it would be applied to the seafood industry? How close is this to being rolled out in test or final product?
Swayze: We are working with the University of Sussex in England on how to infuse graphene into natural and silicone rubber. We are currently focusing on a rubber sensor product that would be placed around produce items. This band would change color when the produce item reaches a set temperature, which would ensure freshness. We will also have the ability to print on these bands, which would offer our customers the ability to provide location of origin and/or company information. We hope to create this same type of product for the seafood industry – temperature is always important for ensuring freshness of any food.
SeafoodSource: If you're beta-testing this, can you talk about how things are going and what you're learning from using this technology with seafood?
Swayze: Right now we are learning more about temperature and graphene’s role in showcasing that property. We hope to have more research and information on the impact it will have with seafood within the next year.
SeafoodSource: Who would be the primary beneficiaries of this technology – fishermen, processors, distributors, retailers or consumers?
Swayze: This technology would benefit every touch-point – from the lobsterman banding the lobsters to the seafood distributors getting it into the grocery store to the grocery store receiving the fresh seafood and down to the customer choosing the seafood within the store. Every person at each touch-point would be able to ensure the freshness of the product based on the color of the band and be able to track exactly where the seafood was caught based on the print on the band or, when it is ready, the traceability associated with graphene-infused bands.
SeafoodSource: What lessons do you think seafood executives can learn from your company's efforts to continue to innovate?
Swayze: Alliance Rubber encourages every team member to present new ideas on how to improve a process that will streamline manufacturing or a new product they believe would fill a need in the marketplace. Research is important, but having people on your team that get excited and are determined to find answers is invaluable. Our company is hands-on and puts customer service first – we want to provide our customers with the very best.
