ELON, N.C. — A business in Alamance County is permanently closing its doors.
Sonoco’s Tubes & Core manufacturing facility will close impacting 75 workers, according to a North Carolina Warn report. The manufacturing facility will close its doors by December 31, 2020. The business is located on Cook Road in Elon.
Sonoco released the following statement about the business closure.
Response from Sonoco:
It’s never easy to announce the closure of a facility. It’s more than just a place or a physical structure, it’s people and their families. And for that reason, Sonoco never makes these kinds of decisions lightly. That being said, unfortunately, we have had to make the difficult decision to close our Elon, NC, Tube & Core facility. Very few, if any industries, are immune to the current economic challenges the world is facing right now, due in large part to the COVID-19 pandemic, which certainly played a role in this decision. Another contributing factor is that this particular business has been challenged due to declines in specific industries and volume shifts over the last several years. When we looked at our Elon facility specifically, we’ve been seeing volume declining slowly over a long period of time, simply due to an overall drop off in business in the markets and customers served by this plant. As mentioned previously, the COVID situation has certainly not been helpful and has had a negative impact on business and volume, and we simply don’t see volume returning to pre-COVID levels.
This will impact approximately 65 teammates and we will be providing severance packages and outplacement support to help with their transition. We are encouraging teammates to look at potential opportunities at other locations within our system. Our target for closure is the end of this year, December, 2020. We will continue to serve our Elon based customers by redeploying business to other plants within our organization. Upon closure, our intent is to sell the building in Elon.
While comments like these can sound hollow under the circumstances, this had absolutely nothing to do with the performance, dedication and quality of work done by our Elon teammates. This is totally a function of a number of macroeconomic conditions that are simply beyond our control and precipitated us having to make this decision as an organization. We thank the entire team at Elon for their service and wish them nothing but the best in their future endeavors. And we thank the community of Elon for their support over the years, it's been a great place to do business.
While the statement provided by Sonoco references 65 workers, the North Carolina Warn report references 75 employees who will be impacted by the closing.