USA – Sustainable packaging provider Sonoco is permanently closing its Hutchinson Paper Mill, affecting 116 employees who were informed of the closure on 6th March.
The reasoning for the shutdown hasn’t been disclosed, but it’s another economic blow to an area already impacted by recent layoffs.
Sonoco had filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act (WARN) notice Monday informing the state of its intentions to close the facility.
The WARN, according to the Department of Labor, helps ensure advance notice in cases of qualified plant closings and mass layoffs, requiring employers to provide notification 60 calendar days in advance.
Tucker Allen, business services director of Kansas WorkforceOne, told the Hutchinson News on Monday, “Separation begins today. The way I understand it is the hourly employees are all gone. They’ve already been let go as of today.”
The Hutchinson facility has been in operation for more than a century. It opened in 1909 and had been through several owners before Sonoco purchased the plant from Republic Paperboard Co. in 2001.
The mill consumed about 320 tonnes of mixed paper and old corrugated containers per day and produced about 295 tonnes per day of finished products.
KansasWorks says it will deploy a rapid response team to Hutchinson to assist employees impacted by the closing.
Commenting on the closure, Hutchinson Chamber CEO Debra Teufel said: “Sonoco has been a long-time employer in the Hutchinson community for over a century, so these jobs were engrained in the DNA of our community.
“One of the things that we immediately went to work doing was making sure that we had a way to reach out to the job seekers.”
Teufel said the chamber immediately reached out to Sonoco human resources to see if they could help. As of Tuesday evening, the chamber hasn’t heard back. Teufel said they can’t speculate as to why the plant closed.
The decision to close the facility comes as a shocker to the workers who have worked in the facility for a long time.
Ty Lehr worked at the paper mill for 17 years, and he said there were always rumors that this could happen, but he was hoping it wouldn’t be any time soon.
“I think we kind of had a feeling that this might’ve been it, or they might’ve been like saying they’re going to shut down for a couple of months because we’ve been -they’ve been telling us that they’ve been having a lack of business for some time, but it’s the paper industry, people are always buying stuff,” said Lehr.
For all the latest packaging and printing industry news from Africa and the World, subscribe to our NEWSLETTER, follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn, like us on Facebook, and subscribe to our YouTube channel.
