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May 2010 — Zumbiel Packaging is moving its headquarters, the rest of its manufacturing operations and 200 jobs from Norwood to new facilities in Northern Kentucky, beginning by the end of the year.
The Norwood-based manufacturer of paperboard consumer packaging recently completed site work for a second building in Hebron. It plans to build a 180,000-square-foot plant on its existing 30-acre site in Corporex’s Gateway Industrial Park.
The company already operates a 320,000-square-foot plant there that makes beverage packaging, mainly 12-pack cartons for canned soft drinks. It built that plant in 2005 after selling an older, multiple-story factory near Xavier University to the school.
The Norwood plant produces folding cartons for automotive parts – spark plugs and oil filters – pharmaceutical products, bakery goods, candy and some soft drinks.
CEO Bob Zumbiel said the family-owned company is in contract talks for construction of the new plant but has not finalized a deal. He declined to disclose the contractor’s identity or the projected cost of the project.
Zumbiel’s plant in Hebron is one of the largest producers of paperboard beverage packaging in the country. It has been operating around the clock to keep up with demand that increased during the recession as people tended to stay home more and consequently drank more canned and bottled beverages. Its customers include most of the major producers of soft drinks, and it has been expanding into the beer market.
Ed Zumbiel, vice president of beverage packaging, said Zumbiel, Graphic Packaging and MeadWestvaco together account for more than 95 percent of the U.S. beverage packaging market. The Norwood plant tends to make lower-volume products that generate higher margins.
The timing of the construction of a new plant was prompted in part by plans to purchase a new press that its Harris Avenue facility in Norwood couldn’t accommodate, Zumbiel said. With the new, higher-speed press, the current plant’s five presses will be reduced to four in Hebron.
“It had a few whiskers on it, so we thought we’d get a nice young one,” Zumbiel said of the old plant along the Norwood Lateral. The roughly 100,000-square-foot structure was built in 1951, with a major addition in 1973 The family-owned company was founded in 1843.
“There’s no land available in Norwood,” Zumbiel said, adding that “Kentucky wanted us a lot more than Ohio did.”
The move will increase production capacity but won’t have much impact on employment. Zumbiel said he expects most employees to move with it to Hebron, 25 miles away.
No plans for Norwood property
Zumbiel’s move will result in the loss of another 200 manufacturing-related jobs in Norwood, which already has seen several hundred disappear in recent years. Besides the jobs that departed with Zumbiel five years ago, about 500 left when U.S. Playing Card moved to Northern Kentucky last year.
Kentucky economic development officials approved up to $2 million in tax credits for the company’s move in December 2003. At the time, it was proposing a $42 million project that would consolidate both of its Norwood plants into a single 500,000-square-foot facility in Hebron. It projected it would create 35 new Kentucky jobs as well as maintain 25 jobs then held by Kentucky residents.
Zumbiel never contacted the Ohio Department of Development or applied for incentives from Ohio, and the agency was not aware the company was moving, according to spokeswoman Bethany Close in Columbus.
The company has no firm plans for its Norwood property, which sits on about 3 acres. The site is bounded on three sides by railroad tracks and the Norwood Lateral (state Route 562), a major east-west connector between interstates 75 and 71.
“We haven’t figured that out yet. It’s not a good time to be selling real estate. We might just sit on it for a while. We’ve got enough on our plate right now,” Zumbiel said.
Norwood Mayor Tom Williams blamed the exodus of manufacturing jobs from Norwood mainly on a lack of suitable land for modern, single-story factories, but touted the city’s central location as an advantage. It’s organizing an event this summer to showcase its assets to real estate brokers, developers and businesses, he said.
Jordan Weidner, a real estate broker with Cassidy Turley who is marketing the Linden Pointe office park nearby, said any redevelopment of the Zumbiel site for office space would be difficult in the current environment. The American Laundry Building underwent such a renovation five years ago, but the world has changed since then, he said.
Source: jnewberry@bizjournals.com | (513) 337-9433
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