A downtown Fort Wayne packaging plant that employs 116 will close in mid-2010, its owner announced.
Graphic Packaging International Inc. said it will close the folding-carton plant at 102 W. Superior St. and another plant in Santa Clara, Calif. The plants make containers such as pizza boxes.
“We did a merger in 2008 with Altivity Packaging,” spokeswoman Cathy Worthy said Wednesday. “When we did it, we said we’d be closing some facilities.”
But it wasn’t until this week that Graphic Packaging, based in Marietta, Ga., identified which plants would close.
The local plant was a Smurfit-Stone Corp. location until being acquired by Altivity.
Graphic has both union and non-union workers at its Fort Wayne plant. Worthy said she didn’t know their pay ranges.
“Anytime we do this kind of thing, we try to see if there are any spots in our other facilities for workers who would want to relocate,” Worthy said. “We have a pretty good track record of doing that.”
Graphic has plants in Indiana, including Kendallville and Muncie, and in Ohio, Michigan and Illinois. In February, the company announced the Muncie plant would close this year.
Representatives of WorkOne Northeast went to the Fort Wayne plant Tuesday to inform workers about unemployment and other benefits, Worthy said. She didn’t know whether – or what kind – of severance will be offered to Fort Wayne workers who will lose jobs.
Altivity owned another plant in Wabash, but the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Justice Department required that plant to be sold separately.
Shares of Graphic’s parent company, Graphic Packaging Holding Co., were up 19 cents Wednesday, to $2.63, on the New York Stock Exchange.
