Nip Impressions logo
Thu, Mar 28, 2024 05:19
Visitor
Home
Click here for Pulp & Paper Radio International
Subscription Central
Must reads for pulp and paper industry professionals
Search
My Profile
Login
Logout
Management Side
Quad/Graphics facility in Waseca, Minnesota closing

WASECA, Minnesota (From news reports) - The company that has defined Waseca for a half century and has long been its biggest employer is shutting down.

Quad Graphics, formerly Brown Printing, will close at the end of the year.

"It hasn't come as a surprise. There have been rumblings around town," said Mayor Roy Srp.

The hope now is that a manufacturer will be interested in taking over the massive plant along Old Highway 14 on the west edge of town.

Quad Graphics bought the Waseca plant just three years ago for $100 million. The sale also includes two other Brown facilities, one in Illinois that employed 550 and one in Pennsylvania that employed 500.

At the time, the 775,000-square-foot Waseca facility employed about 750 non-union workers.

Since then job cuts have left fewer than 400 workers at the plant, but it remained the largest employer in the city of 9,200.

"When Brown Printing sold to Quad Graphics, it was alarming," Srp said. "But my hat is off to Quad for coming here and keeping the employees employed as long as they did. The printing industry is changing," he said.

"I'm concerned about the employees and their families. I'm hoping we can absorb most of those jobs back into the community."

Srp said the city has reached out to the company offering to assist in any way during the transition and to help find a new tenant for the plant.

"I think a plant that size and quality is of a premium. I understand there are a couple already interested in it."

Claire Ho, director of corporate communications for Quad, said about 30 employees will continue working for the company in the Waseca area after the plant closes to support clients and other Quad facilities.

She said in a statement that the company made the decision to close in order to "strengthen its competitive position and overall value to clients by producing work where it can achieve the greatest manufacturing and distribution efficiencies and in no way reflects the quality and performance of employees in the plant."

She said the company will assist employees in finding new jobs, including those available at other Quad Graphics locations throughout the country.

The Waseca plant primarily produces special interest publications and journals.

Brown Printing was founded in Waseca by the late Wayne "Bumps" Brown in 1949.

Quad Graphics was founded by the late Harry Quadracci in 1971 in Sussex, Wisconsin, where it remains headquartered. The international company has 25,000 employees and describes itself as "a leading global provider of print and multichannel solutions for consumer magazines, special interest publications, catalogs, retail inserts/circulars, direct mail, books, directories, and commercial and specialty products."

The company has more than 50 facilities on three continents.

As print magazines and other print publications decline in the digital age, printers such as Quad have struggled to realign.

In 2005, the Waseca facility began its largest expansion ever with a $56 million multi-year 150,000-square-foot expansion that included a six-story warehouse building, paper receiving, paper storage and additional press room bays.

****

Jim Thompson is back again...with a new book on a taboo subject: the personalities in the pulp & paper industry. Jim has written in the past on many subjects based on his four plus decades in the worldwide pulp and paper industry. This new book is packed full of information valuable to the senior member of the industry as well as the recent entrant. A must for every pulp and paper library.


Printer-friendly format

 





Powered by Bondware
News Publishing Software

The browser you are using is outdated!

You may not be getting all you can out of your browsing experience
and may be open to security risks!

Consider upgrading to the latest version of your browser or choose on below: