Area Companies Part Of Cintas Acquisitions

Cincinnati-based Cintas Corp. is beefing up its Dayton presence as it makes a push into the growing document shredding market.

Since 2002, Cintas Corp., a uniform company, has been buying companies that specialize in document storage and destruction for customers such as hospitals and financial firms, said Karen Carnahan, Cintas vice president and treasurer.

Cintas' latest acquisition is Cincinnati-based Data Storage Centers, which provides document storage services and also has a storage facility. Carnahan said the agreement closed during the past month.

This purchase follows the acquisition of Franklin, Ohio-based Erth, a document-shredding company, early last year. Included in that deal was a Centerville processing plant for the off-site shredding of documents before they're bundled and shipped out for recycling.

Cintas has been making its move on the document shredding business in the past 18 months, and the company now has about a dozen locations, including Dayton and the Cincinnati area, Carnahan said.

"We are optimistic about the fit it has with our companies, and we're considering more expansion in that business," Carnahan said.

Cintas sees document shredding as a growing area because of a slew of federal rules addressing privacy, including the Privacy Act, and rising concerns about identify theft. Dayton (Ohio) Business Journal