Stone Container to close Portland, CT plant. P&W customer ?

PORTLAND, Conn. -- The Stone Container Plant in Portland told Eyewitness News that the plant will be closing this fall.
The plant’s 23 salaried and 70 hourly employees were informed of the impending closure on Tuesday.

http://www.wfsb.com/money/20289108/detail.html

ORTLAND, Conn. -- The Stone Container Plant in Portland told Eyewitness News that the plant will be closing this fall. The plant’s 23 salaried and 70 hourly employees were informed of the impending closure on Tuesday.

Got to like the comment in the article “streamline operations for market competiveness.”, another way of saying they can't compete...

Not good news for the future of the Conn River swing bridge. Stone was the Connecticut Central RR's largest customer by far so this is not good news for the future of all the P&W operations in the Middletown area.

More jobs to China? Tough time to be losing your job.....

Smurfit-Stone, once the largest packaging company in the world, is in Chapter 11. Look for more mill and corrugated box plant closures, all of which used rail to transport paper rolls.

Looking at the aerial image of the area, it looks like there is quite a bit infrastructure just to access this plant by rail (the bridge, a Y, etc.). There are 4 other Smurfit-Stone locations in CT alone: Uncasville, Milford, Ridgefield, and Stamford. There are several more in MA: Franklin, Mansfield, and Wakefield.

Hopefully, they will move the jobs to some of these locations versus oversees and the rail business changed to one of those plants with access.

Just looked at the aerial. I had no idea there was that little trackage left east of the river. It looks like end-of-track is basically within sight of the bridge. Are there any other rail customers over on that end of the old Airline?

I believe the only other company still using rail is the build material recycling plant. Murpy Road Recyclers or used to be called that). They were shipping up to 22 loads a week to Hartford up the Valley Branch (whish is currentnly out of service and the cars are going south to Cedar Hill as needed).

Hey, that's too bad. I used to work right next to there, would always run out to see what P&W was bringing across when I heard them sound the horn. I stopped by there the other day and didn't see anything, guess that explains why. Too bad, I grabbed some nice pix of P&W coming out of their warehouse some months back.

I went by this facility the other day and sadly it was pretty quiet, although there were a few cars over at Murphy Road Recycling. Any plans for the use of the Smurfit Stone building?

This is not good news with so many jobs going to China or as in the case of my wife, she lost hers recently to India.

You can pull up the CDOT rail map and see what's left, either rail- or land-banked.

http://www.ct.gov/dot/lib/dot/documents ... ils2x3.pdf