Mundelein, Ill.-based Commercial Plastics Co. is closing a Lakeville, Minn., facility it acquired in April when it purchased the assets of injection molder Imperial Plastics Inc., affecting 122 employees.
Layoffs will begin in February, CEO Matt O’Connor told Plastics News, and the plant will be completely closed by May.
Closing the Lakeville facility was never the initial plan, O’Connor said, although it is the only facility Commercial leased instead of owned.
“What we’ve learned about [the Lakeville facility’s] customers and capabilities, it is just a better fit to run that business in some of our other locations,” he said. “We bought the company out of bankruptcy in April … we had to work from there to understand what we had.”
Commercial plans to move each of the Lakeville facility’s customers’ production “to each location that fits them the best,” over the next couple of months, O’Connor said.
Over the last nine months, he said, “the Lakeville team has done an absolutely amazing job through a lot of tough times, with the bankruptcy, the pandemic and then a pretty good amount of growth that started in the summer.”
Commercial Plastics ranked No. 64 in Plastics News’ 2020 ranking of North American injection molders with sales of $150 million. That total included the Imperial operations, which were previously estimated at $85 million.
Affected employees will be offered jobs at Commercial’s other locations including Mora, Minn., Waverly, Neb., Kenosha, Wis., and its Mundelein headquarters.
“Each location is hiring and growing,” O’Connor said.
One of the Lakeville facility’s customers plans to set up a job fair in the next few weeks, he added. Other businesses in the area are also working with Commercial’s human resources department to set up interviews with affected employees.
Commercial invested in the Mora facility last year, O’Connor said, with new equipment, infrastructure and a new roof.
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