220 workers set to lose their jobs; City seeks new tenant for building
JACINTO CITY – The Ardagh Glass company has announced that it is closing its glass bottle manufacturing plant on Fidelity Street in Jacinto City. It is estimated that about 220 workers will lose their jobs as a result, and the City of Jacinto City will lose one of its largest employers and tax-payers. The glass bottle plant was originally built by Owens-Corning Glass company, and later acquired by Anheuser-Busch’s Longhorn Division in 2021. The plant’s major customer is the Budweiser plant in Houston.
Jacinto City city manager Lon Squyres told the North Channel Star that although the closing of the plant will have a short term effect on the city’s tax income, he expects that another company will be interested in the large warehouse facility, which is a fairly new quality building. He also noted that the Faust Distributing Company has announced a $24 million dollar expansion, with additional new employment, which will help offset the loss of the Ardagh Glass plant.
Ardagh issued the following statement to Packaging Dive magazine:
“After reviewing current beer market conditions, we have announced the closure of our Houston, Texas, glass production facility, effective July 2024,” Ardagh Glass Packaging-North America Vice President of Marketing, Communications and New Product Development Gina Behrman wrote in a statement to Packaging Dive. “The affected customer base will be supplied from Ardagh’s remaining glass manufacturing facilities across the U.S.”
The report noted that Ardagh is also halting production at its Seattle wine bottle manufacturing facility, possibly affecting another 244 workers. Last year, the company closed its plants in Louisiana and North Carolina.
Ardagh Group, which boasts 20,000 employees and 62 production facilities worldwide, and 10 other glass-making plants in the U.S., is based in Luxembourg. The company launched an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2017 and its worldwide revenue was approximately $2.44 billion, as of its 2024 first quarter report.
In August 2023, Food Dive—a sister publication to Packaging Dive—reported that in Ardagh’s second quarter 2023 earnings call, Ardagh Chairman Paul Coulson said the company’s revenues fell 12 percent, “severely impacted by the controversy related to a major beer brand.” Food Dive reported that Coulson never mentioned a specific brand in the call, but during the second quarter of 2023, conservative beer drinkers organized a boycott against Bud Light after the brand featured transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney as part of a promotion.
For a long time, glass bottles have been the top option for beer packaging, but more and more beer drinkers over the past few decades have been preferring cans, according to Packaging Dive magazine. The Beer Institute reported in 2020 that cans accounted for nearly two-thirds of beer volume. The rise in large-format can sizes, such as 16-ounce containers and “crowlers” of 32 ounces, along with the ease in working with aluminum cans over glass bottles, are part of the reason for this switch.