Goodyear to close Georgia fabric plant

Atlanta Business Chronicle ^ | July 29, 2003

[Willie Green]

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use.

Goodyear Engineered Products will shut down its Cartersville fabric plant by Oct. 1 and will cut 120 jobs.

"This business decision is based on investments that will be required to keep pace with evolving technology in the fabric industry," said Jim Pecorelli, director of manufacturing. "We will not be able to maintain fabric production as a core competency at this plant in the future."

Goodyear began operations at the plant in 1929. The plant was a primary fabric supplier to the company's North America conveyor belt facilities. It also supplied fabric for automotive coolant hose and air spring production.

Hogansville-based Industrial Specialty Fabrics plans to buy the factory's equipment.

Goodyear Engineered Products is a division of Akron, Ohio-based Goodyear Tire and Rubber Co. (NYSE: GT)

[lelio]

Willie you're putting in some serious overtime! How on earth do you keep up?

[El Gato]

Knowing Goodyear, they probably were still using equipment from 1929. I used to work summers in one of their plants, and we had presses that had been rescued from the scrap heap in Akron, in the late 1940s. Hard to tell how old it actually was. One hyrdolic ram would always leak, no matter how many times they replaced the gaskets. It would stay down while the other 5 (or was it 7?, its been over 30 years) would raise the press, then when they stopped moving the pressure would come up enough to raise the leaking one. I often wondered what the non uniformity of pressure accross the press was doing to the product.