Georgia just keeps getting the short end of the stick.
And if you thought the last round of factory shutdowns was bad, well…
Unfortunately, the situation has gotten quite a bit worse.
More specifically, International Paper recently announced plans to close a whopping four factories across Georgia – with 1,100 jobs eliminated.
The specific victims:
- A containerboard mill in Riceboro
- A packaging facility in Savannah
- A timber / lumber mill in Riceboro
- And a containerboard mill in Savannah
It’s a huge reduction in production capacity for food-compliant packaging at a delicate moment for the broader food industry writ large.
Of course, anyone who has dined out or gone to a grocery store in the last few years knows that stubborn inflation has been an ongoing problem as producers hike prices to stay afloat, especially given the big labor shortages they’ve been suffering.
And then the 2025 trade war began and caused two urgent issues:
- Retaliatory tariffs and boycotts immediately shrunk demand for US exports, including a variety of crops and food products…
- As companies pulled back on spending domestically, consumers got the memo that job cuts could expand and started pulling back on their own spending.
These issues, all combined, have created something of a perfect storm for the food industry.
And the impacts have rippled up and down the supply chain – all the way to impacting packagers like International Paper.
It’s a sad state of affairs, especially for the workers who did nothing wrong and have proven their loyalty over years and even decades of work.
These factories were pillars of the community in Riceboro and Savannah – and now they’re gone, taking over a thousand jobs with them.
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