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Closure of Fresno container plant to cost about 115 jobs
(Fresno Bee (CA) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) Nov. 7--About 115 workers at a Fresno container plant are expected to lose their jobs over the next 12 months in a "phased-down closure," officials said Thursday.
Missouri-based Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. is shutting down its cardboard manufacturing plant at 2525 S. Sunland Ave., in the Calwa neighborhood, as part of a consolidation of its regional operations, said Tim Rowden, a company spokesman.
The Calwa plant produces corrugated cardboard sheets used to make boxes. Earlier this year, Smurfit-Stone purchased a 90% interest in Calpine Corrugated, which operates another plant, one that makes boxes, less than five miles away in Malaga.
"Calpine is a larger facility, and we don't need two plants in the same area," Rowden said Thursday.
Smurfit-Stone filed a plant-closure notice with the state Employment Development Department on Oct. 5. California requires an employer to give a 60-day notice under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act prior to a plant closure, layoff or relocation.
Rowden said the company is planning to close the Calwa plant in phases over the course of a year starting Nov. 23. "If conditions change, we could perhaps keep the plant open in a limited capacity as a warehouse," Rowden said. "It depends on whether there's enough new business to warrant it."
Rowden said some of the 23 salaried employees at the Calwa plant may be absorbed into other Smurfit-Stone operations, "but not the 92 hourly employees."
Employment and resource specialists with the Fresno County Workforce Investment Board will be visiting with workers at the plant next week to advise them about job searching, unemployment benefits, health care and debt management.
"These people will be worried about where their next paycheck will come from, how they're going to get medical or dental care and how to find another job," said Tamico Thomas, a senior outplacement specialist with the Workforce Investment Board. "Usually when our team comes in, they don't know what resources and services are available."
Smurfit-Stone's plans follow the announcement last month that International Paper will close its corrugated-container plant in Hanford and lay off 90 workers.
The Hanford plant, opened in 1996, is expected to be shut down in December. Some workers may be moved to the company's plant in Exeter, which officials said is more efficient.
Smurfit-Stone also plans to close a box-making plant in the City of Industry in Southern California on Nov. 16, according to a WARN notice the company filed with the state. That closure is expected to displace about 100 workers. And another WARN notice reports the company closed a plant in August in Fullerton, where about 100 people worked.
The reporter can be reached at tsheehan@fresnobee.com or (559) 441-6319.
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Copyright (c) 2008, The Fresno Bee, Calif.
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