FEATURE STORY
Stainless Steel Products: Movin’ Right Along By Marion Keller For Stainless Steel Products, growth has been both a blessing and a challenge, necessitating creative solutions. After three decades as a New York company, the bulk steel wire supplier has relocated fully to Pennsylvania, setting up shop in a newly renovated 38,000 square foot facility in West Reading that provides ample space for future evolution.
Apart, Then Together When SSP was founded in 1995, New York state seemed like the best place to build a business; however, a quarter-century later, new options were needed. Lengthening lead times pushed SSP to expand its inventory, increasing quantities of brush wires in stainless steel, oil-tempered steel and copperbased brush wires such as brass, phosphor bronze and nickel silver. To accommodate this expansion, SSP moved its brush wire crimping, straightening and bunching operations to a new facility in Mohnton, Pennsylvania, in January 2022. A year later, though, both original and new locations were straining at the seams. Space wasn’t the only consideration — running one company in multiple locations was growing increasingly difficult from a logistical perspective. “Even in New York, we were in two separate facilities and four different units,” says Ralph Rosenbaum, president of Stainless Steel Products. “When we moved partially to Pennsylvania, I was commuting back and forth, and it was a pain in the neck. Managing it was really tough because I’m only one human.”
SSP started looking around for other alternatives. Finding a building that could accommodate both the electrical systems needed for machinery and manufacturing floor space was a bit of a challenge. Finally, SSP settled on a site being sold by Fortna, a provider of warehouse and distribution solutions using automation, software and robotics. “It was a manufacturing space back in the day, but it evolved into a sales office,” Rosenbaum says. “It needed a lot of rebuilding and demolition work. We went through several months of knocking down and building up.” In April 2025, SSP moved completely out of New York and partially into the new facility. However, it was not until August 2025 that the space at 333 Buttonwood Street was ready to house the entire operation under one roof. While SSP still has a few employees working remotely from New York, the company is now effectively based in Pennsylvania — and is expanding its workforce as it settles into its larger location. “We’ve tapped into a pretty good labor pool,” Rosenbaum says. “Here, people are acclimated to manufacturing. We have more applications, people are waiting — that’s a really good plus. And being in one consolidated space that is organized just makes management a lot easier.”
Ralph Rosenbaum
Room to Run In West Reading, SSP has about 27,000 square feet of manufacturing floor space and 9,500 square feet of warehouse area, with the rest of the facility taken up by offices and conference rooms. Rosenbaum is enjoying certain perks of having a newly renovated location. “I have a door to my office, which I never had before!” he mentions.
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