Burlco container firm buys land to expand

Sea Box Inc., a Burlington County company that modifies common shipping containers for military and commercial use, has set the stage for expansion with the purchase of a property in Cinnaminson for $4.7 million, Binswanger Corp., a Philadelphia commercial real estate broker, said today.

"We had our best year ever last year. We'll see what this year brings," Jim Brennan Jr., Sea Box's founder and president, said in an interview.

Brennan declined to disclose the East Riverton company's annual revenue, but he said Sea Box employs 140, up from about 50 three years ago.

Brennan said the 378,000-square-foot building, where Asahi Glass Co. Ltd. employed 200 until closing the plant in 2007 amid the housing downturn, would give Sea Box much-needed space, though not all of it will be used immediately.

"We've been on two shifts for a couple of years because we've needed the space," Brennan said.

More than 80 percent of the company's business is with the military. Recently, Sea Box has been building mobile machine shops in containers for the Army, Brennan said. One box contains a computer-controlled lathe, another a computer-controlled milling machine. The combination allows the Army to make replacement parts for tanks and other equipment overnight in places such as Afghanistan, Brennan said.

For commercial customers, Sea Box turns large containers into data centers with banks of computer servers.

Last summer, Sea Box bought a neighboring machine shop, H-E Tool & Manufacturing Co. Inc., that is an important supplier of parts.