Alcoa Packaging Making Changes, Expanding Facilities

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). We keep hearing about the woes of the plastics industry, but Alcoa Flexible Packaging (Richmond, Virginia), a subsidiary of Alcoa, Incorporated (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania), is doing everything possible to maximize all of its potential and trim the fat from production, wherever possible.

Alcoa’s plant in Downingtown, Pennsylvania, is building a Class 100,000 cleanroom to allow it expand into the pharmaceutical, medical packaging, and other markets. When the construction is complete, around the end of the second quarter of 2006, Alcoa will close two thermoforming plants in Cumberland, Rhode Island, and Wheaton, Illinois, and move those plants’ thermoforming operations, including all the equipment and machinery, to Downingtown, and close those two plants. About 200 people will be out of jobs in Cumberland and Wheaton. Some have been offered the opportunity to transfer to Downingtown, but the company doesn’t expect many of them to take the offer. The Downingtown plant now has about 200 employees and expects to hire another 140 with the new addition.

Another Alcoa Flexible Packaging plant in Grove City, Pennsylvania, will add sheet extrusion capability to its thermoforming operations. The plant has been sourcing the film it uses to make plastic food containers from a plant in Rogers, Minnesota. The plant will house a new extrusion line that will allow it to extrude its own plastic sheet. When the construction is finished, the plant will be able to produce its own plastic from resins. These changes will allow the company to save a great deal of money on transportation costs and cut inventory. Alcoa’s stated goal is to elimate all steps that don’t add value to its products.

In January 2005, Alcoa, Incorporated had announced that it would restructure its businesses and lay off about 6,500 people globally during the second quarter of 2005 (for a total of 8,300), mostly in its automotive business. This restructuring, which would include layoffs, plant closings, and unit consolidations, would save the company $200 million a year.

Alcoa Flexible Packaging manufactures a variety of packaging materials, including extrusion and adhesive laminated pouch materials, overwraps, liner stock, blister lidding foil, thermoformed trays, cable wrap, plastic shrink sleeve body labels, shrink film and laminated foil. These packaging materials serve the world's leading consumer products manufacturers within the pharmaceutical, medical, food & beverage, and retail markets.

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