Packaging Corporation of America is closing multiple manufacturing sites before year’s end, the company revealed in Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notices this month.
PCA is closing a full-line plant in Allentown, Pennsylvania, come Dec. 1, impacting 60 employees.
Weeks later, come Dec. 19, PCA plans to shutter a full-line plant in Salisbury, North Carolina, affecting 108 workers, the company informed the state on Oct. 3.
PCA could not be reached for comment about reasons for the latest closures.
These announcements follow PCA’s closure of a corrugated plant in Georgia at the start of this year.
PCA noted on its most recent second-quarter earnings call in July that it had some downtime at mills to align with lower demand, resulting in year-over-year and quarter-to-quarter declines in total containerboard production. Recent estimates suggest containerboard site closures announced across the industry this year have resulted in a nearly 10% reduction in North American capacity.
Elsewhere, PCA is growing. The U.S.-only company recently completed its $1.8 billion acquisition of Greif’s containerboard business, which came with mills in Virginia and Ohio, plus sheet feeder and corrugated plant locations across the country.
