Norcross, Ga.-based Rock-Tenn Company will close its facility at 2800 W. Custer Ave. in Milwaukee by July 5 and lay off about 69 workers there.
Employees at the corrugated box plant were informed on Monday and production will cease by the end of June, said Robin Keegan, director of corporate communications.
“Closing the facility is an economic decision, and it’s based on redundancies in plant equipment and capacity,” Keegan said.
The company, which has 210 facilities and 26,000 employees nationwide, has seven locations in Wisconsin, Keegan said.
There are 675 RockTenn employees in Wisconsin, with another Milwaukee location and facilities in Neenah, Adams, Jackson, Germantown and Sturtevant. Neenah is the only other corrugated packaging plant in Wisconsin.
The Custer Avenue location became part of RockTenn when it acquired Chicago-based Smurfit-Stone Container Corp. in 2011. The company owns the facility, and has not yet determined what will happen with the building.
“This facility has operated as a corrugated box plant since the 1950s,” Keegan said. “There are many facilities from the acquisition that we continue to own and operate. We’re constantly evaluating the best way to serve our customers, and looking at our facilities and the resources that we have, what demand is in the area, where customers are located, what kind of products customers are looking for…so we look at many factors.”
