Portola Packaging has announced plans to invest $12m in its facilities in Kingsport, Tennessee, and Tolleson, Arizona, in order to address the growing demand for its dairy containers as well as hot-fill and aseptic beverage closures.
The investments are being made in additional high-speed compression and injection molding equipment as well as in existing production line upgrades. The improvements are expected to be completed by the end of the third quarter, and are likely to create approximately 30 jobs.
Portola Packaging will also implement infrastructure replacements and upgrades, as a part of its plan to create more efficient, cost-effective facilities and improve the environmental footprint. These will include process water capacity, hvac/dehumidification, electric power service and distribution, resin delivery.
Portola president and chief executive officer Kevin Kwilinski said that the company's focus on lean manufacturing, reliability-centered maintenance, and product rationalization has allowed it to increase unit throughput per employee by 43% over the past four years.
"After the additional capacity is fully operational, we expect to exceed a 75% improvement for the same metric," Kwilinski added.
As a result of the capacity expansion at the Kingsport and Tolleson facilities, Portola will begin lowering production at its Batavia, Illinois plant in the middle of April. The facility is expected to be completely shut down by August. This move is expected to affect 76 employees.
The 15 corporate employees at the Batavia facility will join the rest of the corporate employees in a new, larger corporate headquarters facility in the Naperville, Illinois area.
Following this, Portola Packaging will operate nine manufacturing facilities around the world: two in the US, three in Canada and one each in Mexico, the UK, Czech Republic and Russia.
Portola Packaging is a leading manufacturer of stock and custom tamper-evident plastic closures and containers for dairy, juice and other food segments.
