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Small and large packaging companies alike announced plans in March to cease operations at certain facilities. The permanent and temporary shutdowns at fiber and plastic companies will result in impacts to more than 300 jobs.
- Jindal Films Americas will close a facility in LaGrange, Georgia, which will affect 98 employees, according to a WARN notice filed with the state on March 20. This U.S. division of the India-based company has two locations, with one in Oklahoma and the LaGrange location housing a production facility, technology center and regional headquarters. Jindal manufactures a variety of films for flexible packaging and labeling, such as recyclable biaxially oriented polyethylene films, for North American customers such as Hershey’s. The closure and separations are slated to occur around May 13.
- Opus Packaging will permanently close its plant in Kalamazoo, Michigan, sometime after April 23, according to a WARN notice the state received on March 15. All 62 jobs at the facility will be eliminated, and the employees have been offered positions at the Caledonia, Michigan, plant “in their same job classification, at the same or greater rate of pay and benefits, and with no loss of seniority.” Opus reports that it informed employees last June about the upcoming closure, and nearly all of them plan to accept the opportunity to transfer; those who do not accept will be offered severance. This corrugated sheet plant became Opus’s sixth manufacturing facility in 2021 when the company acquired Mall City Containers.
- ND Paper will cease some operations at two facilities, one in Maine and one in Wisconsin, according to local news reports. ND Paper laid off about 70 employees at its Biron, Wisconsin, paper mill, according to the Wisconsin Rapids Tribune, reportedly due to challenging market conditions. One machine there will take downtime. The parent company of the Oak Brook, Illinois-based U.S. division is located in Hong Kong; it bought the Biron mill in 2018, pointing to growth in packaging, and last year unveiled upgrades such as a newly built recycling facility that would produce feedstock for mills. ND Paper also is temporarily shutting down one of its papermaking machines in Rumford, Maine, affecting about 100 employees, the Sun Journal reported on March 22. The company said in a statement to the paper that the Rumford downtime is the result of reallocating production capacity to meet customer demand. ND Paper announced in February that it had wrapped up a “historic outage” at Rumford, during which the facility received a “deep-cleaning, some much-needed TLC, and several major repairs and significant projects.”
Other updates
- Metsä Board announced March 21 that it decided not to proceed with a new folding boxboard mill in Kaskinen, Finland, following its pre-engineering phase that cost about 8 million euros, or about $8.6 million. “The total cost of the planned investment was significantly higher than originally estimated, meaning that the targets for payback time and return on capital employed would not have been met,” the company said in a statement. The company announced investments in its other mills to drive growth and expand new product offerings. Metsä announced on March 13 that it would temporarily shut down bleached chemical thermo-mechanical pulp mills in Kaskinen, among other temporary facility shutdowns in Finland, due to the country’s ongoing labor strikes; on March 22 it announced additional temporary shutdowns at paperboard mills because of the strikes.
- UPM Pulp, UPM Timber and UPM Communication Papers disclosed in a company press release on March 8 that they would start change negotiations related to possible temporary layoffs. The negotiations cover a total of approximately 2,260 employees across the three units. The business said it might adjust production due to operating environment uncertainty, which could result in layoffs at all UPM pulp mills, sawmills and communication paper mills in Finland. They anticipate that any temporary layoffs would be phased, with some beginning in July and others running through next February.
