Industrialinfo.com Identifies 22 North American Industrial Plant Closings in January

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). For the month of January 2003, Industrialinfo.com confirmed (22) plant closings for North America affecting over 3,400 employment positions. Of the plants, three pulp and paper mills were shutdown, two operating onsite cogeneration plants with 38 megawatts (MW) and 102 MW capacity. Other industries continuing to showing weakness is the apparel and textiles industries, corrugated and paper board product manufacturing, and the plastic resins businesses.

Click image at right to view the January 2003 North American Closed Plants Table

Most of the industrial plants closed over the past month were due to economic conditions affecting manufacturing/business performance. During times of uncertainty, companies are streamlining manufacturing operations in order to reduce cost. The majority of the (22) plants closed had started up operations between the years 1940 and 1989.

U.S. manufacturing employment suffered most of the losses as (18) of the (22) plants occurred in the country. Mexico followed next with three plants and Canada with one. As far as industry statistics are concerned, the pulp, paper and wood industry continues loose manufacturing plants to weak conditions in the industry. There were eight plants closed in the pulp, paper and wood industry, followed by seven in the industrial manufacturing sector, five food and beverage industry, and two in chemical processing.

Industrialinfo.com performs daily market research tracking over 42,000 industrial plant sites in North America. In 2002, industrialinfo.com identified over 600 industrial plant sites that had closed, shuttered or mothballed. To subscribe to industrialinfo.com's monthly closed plant report at a cost of $250 per year, send inquiries to industrialmanufacturing@industrialinfo.com Information is also available on thousands of historical plant site closings.