Long Island’s own candlemakers, Paramold Manufacturing, LLC, is a fifth-generation family business with more than a century and a half of history behind it.
The Sayville company dates back to 1852 in the Netherlands, in Europe, when founders and newlyweds Johanna Keunen and Bernhard G. Koster opened their first factory and named the business Koster Keunen. Then, in 1930, the manufacturers entered the United States market and began producing candles in Sayville.
“We are so proud of our long family history, as a fifth-generation family owned and run business,” the Koster family states on the Paramold website.
By the 1960s, third-generation business owner Joseph Koster made a key contribution to the company’s future: the Koster Keunen Wax Granulator. The invention sprays liquid paraffin wax into a cooling chamber and turns it into granular, sandlike pieces. The machine is still produced and used by many industries today.
In 1976, the Paramold name was born when Joseph’s son, Richard, used a pressing machine to make pressed candles from the wax granulator. This allowed the company to make many more candles at once and made Paramold one of the first U.S. companies to manufacture pressed tealight candles.
“This process allows us to produce pieces in a quicker time period than pouring candles, the way it was traditionally done,” said current owner, Richard “Rick” Koster Jr. — Richard’s son and Joseph’s grandson.
More recently, in 2012, the siblings who now own Paramold — Rick, Katy, Tess, and Kim — created their own candle brand, 90 Bourne, named after the street address of the Sayville factory that has seen nine decades of business.
Over the years, the company rebranded, merged with the Koster Keunen Waxes, and expanded its facility to the 16-acre, 60,000-square-foot space it is today. The factory can store more than 1 million pounds of liquid wax and produce more than 2 million candles per day. The family sells a large variety of nine different types of candles, as well as candle making supplies, worldwide.
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