RIDGWAY — The North Central Pennsylvania Regional Planning and Development Commission’s executive committee approved a loan on Wednesday to help support Bradford’s Label.com Inc.
In total, $125,000 of North Central’s loan funds were approved for the company out of two pools of money.
A $100,000 loan will come out of the Appalachian Regional Commission Revolving Loan Fund, and the remaining $25,000 will come out of the Economic Development Administration Revolving Loan Fund Program.
The loan was approved to help the company purchase a new printing press.
According to Jennifer Hibbard, North Central’s loan program director, Label.com is a manufacturer of printed labels that sells labels exclusively to distributors.
Currently, the organization has a 10-year-old printing press that is able to print in seven colors on one label.
The funds from the loan will be used to purchase a printing press capable of printing in eight colors on one label.
An additional $125,000 in funds will also be needed, but those funds will be provided via loans from CNB Bank and the Bradford Office of Economic and Community Development.
These loans will be used to help retain 8 jobs at Label.com, Inc. with an average annual wage of $20.33 per hour plus 14 percent benefits.
In addition to approving this loan, the committee also approved a $5,535 expense to install a dark fiber cable between the North Central offices and its tower along Boot Jack.
Only a quarter of a mile of fiber will need to be installed as a line is already in the area that connects to the North Central offices, which are located along Montmorenci Road.
A wireless connection still will be used as a backup in the case that the fiber somehow gets severed while underground.
Bridges said the fiber will provide more reliability to the commission’s network as the wireless on the tower is vulnerable to weather events.
The tower’s reliability is important as an estimated 80 percent of North Central’s traffic goes through that tower.
North Central’s IT department works to deliver broadband connections to public and private entities in difficult places in the region where costs may be too prohibitive for other companies to do so.
