CONTINUING COVERAGE
- Newark Converted Products announced earlier in March that it has expanded operations of its Franklin plant from the production of binder, book and packaging products to now include production of tubes and cores, as well as processes such as converting and slitting of tubes and cores. Steel, paper, rugs and other materials are wound around the heavy industrial tubes
- Newark Converted is a division of Cranford, N.J.-based Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions
- This news outlet learned the investment saved about 50 jobs in Franklin. The laminated paperboard business, to make book covers, for example, is dropping
- Most recently, when top company officials visited Franklin on March 27, they said they had gone as far to pick out land and draw up building designs to build a new tube and core plant in the Indianapolis area. But a last minute decision change was to invest in the existing Franklin facilities instead, saving money and local jobs
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Read past stories and see a video of our interview with Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions online only at www.journal-news.com
More details have been revealed about an investment into a Franklin paper plant, and how close it came to closing.
This news outlet first reported March 18 that Newark Converted Products had invested and expanded operations at its Franklin plant on Chestnut Street.
Workers at the Newark plant in Franklin take paperboard and make laminated binders and book covers out of it, a declining business in the paper industry, said Frank Papa, president and chief executive officer of parent company Newark Recycled Paperboard Solutions.
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 makes heavy industrial tubes and cores from paperboard for the roofing materials, steel, rugs and carpets, mailing, and packaging industries.
On Thursday morning, March 27, CEO Frank 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, he said.
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 beginning in 2013, the company invested more than $3 million in Franklin. 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, he said.
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.”
In addition to making paperboard tubes and cores a quarter to half an inch thick, the Warren County plant also has other capabilities. Workers can take rolls of paperboard and slit them to smaller widths, and turn rolls of paperboard into sheets. Employees continue to process laminated paperboard products, but no longer do the actual lamination on site.
“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.”
Newark Converted wanted to open a tube and core plant in the region to service Ohio Valley customers and because it’s expensive to transport tubes and cores.
The project started in 2013 and the new equipment has since been installed. There is a remaining two to three months of training on the new equipment left to complete, the chief executive said.
Newark Recycled Paperboard, headquartered in New Jersey, 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 approximately 12 tube and core plants owned and operated by Newark, Carbine said.
Newark purchased the Franklin site, at 300 Chestnut St., in the 1990s, 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.
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