Bway to Close Hubbard Can Plant, Idling 60

HUBBARD, Ohio – The new owners of an aerosol and packaging manufacturing plant here plan to close the factory at the end of the year, idling about 60 employees, a director for the Steelworkers Union said.

Workers at Bway Corp.’s plant at 644 Myron St. were notified yesterday that the facility would close .

“We’re very disappointed,” said Pat Gallagher, director of United Steelworkers Sub District 1. “We were going to continue to negotiate a new contract. Instead, they ambushed us and said they were going to close the plant.”

Gallagher said the union was in the process of putting a proposal together that would keep the plant open. “They said they weren’t interested in that,” he said.

Bway Corp., based in Atlanta, acquired the plant from Ball Corp. in March. The plant manufactures aerosol cans and operates a painting line. Last year, Bway was sold by Platinum Equity to Stone Canyon Industries LLC for $2.4 billion.

Bway operates 23 plants across the United States, three in Canada and one in Puerto Rico, according to its website. The company has annual sales of more than $1 billion and has 3,000 employees. It produces metal paint cans, steel pails, aerosol cans, monotop cans, and ammunition boxes. The company also manufactures plastic containers such as hybrid paint cans, pails and drums.

The containers are used to package industrial, bulk food and retail goods.

The Steelworkers Union is now trying to investigate whether employees qualify for federal trade adjustment assistance, Gallagher said.

“We’ll contact all the state agencies and try to set up unemployment numbers and contact other employers in the area,” that will notify them of employees with transferrable skills.

“It’s a very disheartening situation,” Gallagher said. “We were optimistic that they were going to be good employers.”

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.