Clearwater Paper To Close Oklahoma City Tissue Converting Facility, Cut Jobs

(RTTNews) - Clearwater Paper Corp. (CLW) announced the permanent closure of its Oklahoma City converting facility and permanent shutdown of two tissue machines at the company's Neenah, Wisconsin, tissue facility.

Clearwater Paper said it intends to run its Oklahoma City facility until its permanent closure on March 31, 2017. All of the facility's 131 employees will be impacted. The facility converts large parent rolls of tissue into packaged products.

"Because of significant productivity gains from our cost and optimization programs across the company, we expect Oklahoma City's production to be effectively absorbed and more efficiently supplied by other Clearwater Paper facilities," said Glenn Taylor, vice president of manufacturing for Clearwater Paper's consumer products division.

Also, as part of an overall facility optimization and restructuring plan, Clearwater Paper's Neenah location will permanently shut down two of the company's highest-cost tissue machines, affecting approximately 85 of the facility's approximate 400 employees and removing a total production capacity of 32,000 tons beginning December 31, 2016. Three remaining tissue machines will continue to manufacture an array of private label and away-from-home tissue products.

The company noted that it will work closely with state employment agencies to assist employees in receiving training, educational benefits and other benefits that enable them to find new employment as quickly as possible. The company will also provide private career assistance services to help employees through this difficult time.

The company expects the total impact of non-recurring exit related costs to be approximately $13 million to $16 million, $4 millionto $6 million of which is expected to be incurred this year with the remainder in 2017. The cost savings benefits resulting from the facility consolidation and optimization are expected to be $10 million on an annual basis, with $7 million to $9 million in 2017, which will contribute to the company meeting its previously announced operational improvement target.