Alabama has lost a barrel-making factory tied to the American whiskey business, adding 71 jobs to the year’s growing list of food and beverage manufacturing cuts. Alabama Cooperage in Trinity reached its scheduled closure date on September 14, 2026.
The plant was formerly known as Jack Daniel’s Cooperage and produced barrels used in whiskey making. Alabama’s official WARN list identifies the action as a closure affecting 71 employees, while owner Independent Stave Company said the decision was made to align production with current market demand.
The facility once carried the Jack Daniel’s name
The Trinity plant has a direct connection to one of the best-known names in Tennessee whiskey. Brown-Forman, the parent company of Jack Daniel’s, sold the cooperage to Independent Stave Company in 2024. After the sale, the operation was renamed Alabama Cooperage.
Cooperages occupy a specialized place in the beverage supply chain because they manufacture the wooden barrels used to age whiskey and other spirits. That makes a cooperage closure different from the loss of a bottling line or warehouse: it removes a skilled manufacturing operation that produces a key input for distillers.
71 workers are losing their jobs
Independent Stave announced the shutdown in July, giving September 14 as the effective date. Workforce Alabama’s WARN records list the Trinity action as a plant closure and confirm that 71 employees are affected.
The company said it was adjusting its production footprint to match current market demand. The closure came just over two years after Brown-Forman sold the cooperage to Independent Stave in 2024, making the September 2026 shutdown a relatively quick change in direction under the new owner. No separate public announcement reviewed for this article indicated that the plant would be sold to another barrel maker or reopened under a different operator.
A local manufacturing link to whiskey production ends
For Lawrence County, the closure ends a notable chapter in local manufacturing. The plant’s former Jack Daniel’s identity connected Trinity directly to a major consumer whiskey brand, even though ownership had changed two years before the shutdown.
The September closure also shows how changes in beverage demand can reach businesses that consumers rarely see. Distilleries may be the public face of the whiskey industry, but cooperages supply the barrels essential to aging the product. In Trinity, that part of the supply chain has now gone quiet, and 71 workers are affected by the loss of the operation.
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