UTi Integrated Logistics LLC plans to discontinue operations at Sealed Air Corp.’s Sturtevant warehouse and lay off its 200 employees there in January.
Long Beach, California-based UTi is a third-party logistics provider that has operated the Sealed Air plant for about 10 years, said Julie House, human resources implementation manager at UTi.
“Sealed Air owns the products. We are just providing the warehousing services to Sealed Air,” House said.
The warehouse is at 901 Renaissance Boulevard in Sturtevant. UTi expects to permanently cease operations there on Jan. 15, 2017, after Sealed Air switched to another third-party logistics provider, XPO Logistics Inc. UTi expects XPO may rehire some or all of the warehouse employees when it takes over operations on Jan. 16, House said.
Greenwich, Connecticut-based XPO will begin interviewing UTi employees in October and November, she said. XPO has 88,000 employees and 1,440 locations worldwide.
“(XPO) hopefully will hire everyone that passes their background and their drug screening,” she said. “The activities in the warehouse, it has to be a seamless transition from UTi to XPO.”
Neither Sealed Air nor XPO could not be reached for comment. Sealed Air has been reducing its presence in Wisconsin over the past two years, including the relocation of 300 jobs from Sturtevant to North Carolina in 2014.
“I don’t know the reason,” House said. “That decision was made by Sealed Air.”
The UTi employees impacted were mostly forklift operators. Other positions included general warehouse, warehouse clerical, office support and supervisors. The employees were not represented by a union and bumping rights do not exist. UTi has more than 10,000 employees at 310 offices and 230 logistics centers in 59 countries.
