Come July, nearly 200 employees will be out of work as a storied St. Paul recycling facility closes permanently.

Smurfit WestRock, a global packaging company, announced Wednesday that it will lay off roughly 189 employees and permanently close its St. Paul coated recycled board mill at 2250 Wabash Ave., off Interstate 94 and Minnesota 280, according to a notice filed with the state.

Affected positions include, but are not limited to, chemical attendants, paper testers, refiner operators, loaders, electricians, managers and supervisors, according to the notice.Union reaction

A number of the employees are represented by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW Local 110), the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE Local 70) and the United Steelworker of America (USW Local 264).

The plant has slowly scaled back operations over the years, reducing staffing and production from two major lines down to one in 2022. More than 130 of 360 workers were let go as the factory ended its run of corrugated paper, though it retained a separate unit dedicated to producing coated recycled boards.

“They used to do everything there,” said Brian Winkelaar, business agent for IBEW 110, which represents eight electricians in the plant’s electrical shop. “They would make the cardboard, fold the cardboard and print it 30 years ago. Slowly, they took the printing away, then the folding.”

Winkelaar said the WestRock plant — known until 2015 as RockTenn — operated almost around-the-clock, so it took him aback when it went offline for a week in mid-April, around Good Friday. At noon Wednesday, his union received a call that there would be an emergency meeting at 3 p.m. that day.

Plant officials met separately with unionized employees, salaried employees and union representatives to deliver news of the factory’s closure.

“They said that customers are going to different paper products,” Winkelaar said. “That’s what their explanation was. One of the unions asked if this is tariff-related. They said no, not really, because they export more than they import.”

Kevin Rawlings, who has spent 24 years working at the plant, said he joined the factory when it still had a carton-folding assembly line. He worked his way up to the position of clay coating mixer, or “clay man.”

Rawlings, 53, called news of the plant closure “a jolt,” yet far from unexpected.

“After they shut down the other mill that makes the corrugating medium, we’ve all been waiting for the other shoe to drop,” Rawlings said on Thursday. “They had let maintenance go. They’d fix things as they break, but they weren’t doing much proactively. The trades were really understaffed. It sure seemed like this was coming.”

Most of the plant’s workers are represented by United Steelworkers. Bumping rights will follow applicable collective bargaining agreements and there are no trade implications at this time, per the notice filed with the state.

In addition to the St. Paul facility, the company will discontinue production at its containerboard mill in Texas and permanently close two converting facilities in Germany, totaling some 650 job losses, according to a company news release.

With the U.S. closures, the company expects to reduce its containerboard and coated recycled board production by more than 500,000 tons.

Storied history

The recycling facility known today as WestRock first planted its foot on Wabash Avenue in 1907 when Theodore Roosevelt was president.

The facility would go on to be known as the Waldorf Paper Products Co., then the Hoerner Waldorf Corp., then as the Waldorf Corp. in 1985, according to records from the Minnesota Historical Society.

By 1994, Waldorf was producing more than 400,000 tons of recycled paperboard annually, supplying printed boxes to companies like General Mills, Procter & Gamble and Hormel Foods, accourding to the MNHS. At that time, the company had about 2,200 employees, an annual revenue of about $375 million and was the fifth-largest privately-held company in Minnesota.

In 1996, Atlanta-based Rock-Tenn Co. bought the St. Paul operation.

Rock-Tenn was forced to pivot in 2007 after electrical utility Xcel Energy shut down the coal-powered High Bridge power plant, which supplied the factory’s heat. With help from the St. Paul Port Authority, Rock-Tenn was able to perform an energy-related retrofit of its building, resulting in significant energy savings.

After narrowly avoiding extinction, Rock-Tenn went on to become WestRock in 2015 as a result of a merger with packing company MeadWestvaco.

Smurfit was added to the roster last summer when packaging company Smurfit Kappa acquired WestRock.

“While closing facilities is never an easy decision, it is based on a realistic expectation of current and future capacity needs, operating costs and an unrelenting focus on improving our business,” said Tony Smurfit, president and group chief executive officer of Smurfit WestRock, in the release. “We are very grateful for the significant contributions made by the teams at these locations over the years and we will do all we can to support them throughout this process.”