Rather than close the plant or wind operations down with the direction business was going, Newark’s leaders decided to invest in new equipment. Employees are being trained in a different line of business for the Cranford, N. J.-based company. About 50 jobs were saved.
Now, Newark in Franklin, on Chestnut Street, makes heavy industrial tubes and cores from paperboard for the roofing materials, rugs and carpets, mailing, and packaging industries.
On Thursday morning, Papa and Jim Carbine, senior vice president of the company’s converted division, visited Franklin to celebrate the local plant’s “grand re-opening.”
“This is the type of workforce that accepts change,” Papa told employees and city leaders gathered at the facilities.
“Quite frankly, we were planning to build a new tube and core plant in Indianapolis to serve this area,” Papa said. The land and building were already picked out in neighboring Indiana.
But there was a last minute change.
It was decided, “let’s give the people of Franklin a chance,” Papa said.
Papa told this newspaper that the company invested more than $3 million in Franklin. He said previous estimates he provided that the investment was in the range of $300,000 to $600,000 only accounted for the cost of training, and not the new equipment.
However, if Newark would have built a tube and core plant in Indianapolis, the cost to start from scratch would have been from $10 million to $12 million.
“This is a story of Ohio,” Carbine said. “This is combining experience with a whole new set of skills.”
“The most promising words that I heard this morning is Mr. Papa put the growth of this plant on the workers here,” said Sonny Lewis, Franklin city manager. “They won’t let you down.”
It’s expensive to transport tubes and cores and the Franklin location gives Newark a reach into the Ohio Valley for shipping.
The project started in 2013 and the new equipment has been installed. There is a remaining two to three months of training on the new equipment left to complete, the chief executive said.
The Warren County plant also has other capabilities such as taking rolls of paperboard and slitting them to smaller widths, and turning rolls of paperboard into sheets.
Newark Recycled Paperboard has about 31 facilities and 1,500 employees nationwide. The company sources all its raw material from recycled cardboard — collecting about 1.4 million tons a year — and breaks it down at paper mills to make paperboard. Paperboard is what a cereal box is made of, for example.
Some of the material is sold and some of the paperboard goes to converting plants like the one in Franklin to make end products. Franklin is one of 11 tube and core plants owned and operated by Newark, Papa said.
Newark purchased the Franklin site, at 300 Chestnut St., in 1993, company officials said.
The same company, formerly known as The Newark Group, closed the paper mill Franklin Boxboard Corp. on East Sixth Street in 2011, cutting about 80 jobs at the time.