The Anchor Glass Container Corp. manufacturing plant on Huron Street is heading toward closure, ending a century-long run of glass bottle-making at the location under different company names.
The shuttering of the only remaining glass bottle manufacturing plant in Florida will affect employment of 144 people at the plant located at 2121 Huron St. in Northwest Jacksonville.
The plant has made bottles for the Anheuser-Busch plant on the Northside. It is one of six bottle-making plants operated nationwide by Anchor Glass.
“Changing business needs require us to close this facility,” Anchor Glass wrote Monday in a letter to Mayor Donna Deegan and City Council President Randy White.
Leon Haley memorial: Friends’ fishing trip led to new UF Health Jacksonville trauma center
Four Seasons: Will Shad Khan’s Four Seasons rival the grand hotels of Jacksonville’s past
The company sent the letter to city leaders as part of the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification program, known as WARN for short. The letter says the official closure of the plant will occur in February.
Anchor Glass Container, headquartered in Tampa, has plants in Georgia, Oklahoma, Indiana, New York and Minnesota.
First Coast Manufacturers Association President Lake Ray said the Anchor Glass plant in Jacksonville supplied glass bottles for a number of other businesses over the years but the use of plastic and metal for containers squeezed the demand for glass bottles. He said plants that make glass bottles have been adding advanced manufacturing equipment to increase productivity.
“It’s disappointing,” he said. of the Jacksonville plant’s closure. “I certainly hate to see it but it’s just representative of where technology and where the change in materials are taking us.”
(This story was updated to add new information.)
“
This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Anchor Glass will shut its Jacksonville bottle-making plant
