Ball Corp. announced April 8 that it will permanently cease manufacturing at its PET bottle plants in Baldwinsville, N.Y., and Watertown, Wis., and supply customers of those plants from larger Ball facilities.
“Baldwinsville and Watertown are the smallest PET bottle manufacturing plants in our system,” said John Hayes, executive vice president and chief operating officer, in a news release. “With the industry slowdown of demand for monolayer PET containers, it is important that we continue to focus on ensuring our cost base is competitive.
“Consolidating production capacity into larger, more efficient plants is necessary to better balance our supply with market demand and to improve the performance of our plastic packaging business.”
The Baldwinsville plant opened in 1996 and operates seven production lines capable of making about 1 billion bottles annually. It employs 113. The plant is scheduled to stop manufacturing by July 7.
The Watertown plant operates four production lines with an annual capacity of roughly 250 million bottles and employs 52. Ball acquired the plant from Wis-Pak Inc., in 2001. It is scheduled to close by June 7.
Ball's other plastics packaging manufacturing plants are located in Chino, Calif.; Atlanta; Batavia, Ill.; Ames, Iowa; Belleview, Ohio; and Delran, N.J.
The Broomfield-based company will take an after-tax charge of about $14 million to address costs for the shutdowns.
Beginning next year, Ball expects the closures to save the company $12 million annually.