Aug. 21--One of Flagstaff's few heavy manufacturing plants will lay off 14 workers and reassign another today.

SCA Tissue is shutting down for at least several months one of the two papermaking machines at its Butler Avenue plant, citing a drop in demand. There are 265 SCA Tissue employees in the region, including a second plant in Bellemont. Before today's layoffs, there were about 77 employees at the Flagstaff plant.

The company also had two open positions tied to the papermaking machine in Flagstaff that it will not fill.

The decision to cut production at the Flagstaff plant reflects a drop in demand for the 100 percent recycled tissues, towels and napkins manufactured under the global Tork brand, said Fred Albrecht, the vice president for manufacturing with SCA Tissue North America.

Albrecht said he is optimistic that production using the second papermaking machine would resume in several months.

"We will assess the timing of the paper machine re-start with respect to paper inventory balance and the need to provide reliable product supply to our customers," Albrecht said. "Our hopes are to re-start by the end of 2009 or early 2010."

Mike Bogenschutz, the vice president of plant operations for SCA Tissue North America, said the company was also making temporary cuts at its three other locations in the U.S., but he did not elaborate.

"Our whole industry has been impacted by the recession and we are not insulated from it," he said.

Bogenschutz said the Flagstaff plant took the largest of the cuts. It supplies toilet paper primarily to hotels and restaurants in Arizona, California and part of Colorado. The company does not sell the tissues, towels and napkins under its global Tork brand to retailers.

Headquartered in Philadelphia, SCA Tissue is one of the three largest producers of bulk tissue products in North America.

SCA Tissue annually uses more than 750,000 tons of recycled paper for its Tork product line.

The parent company of SCA is a $17 billion global consumer goods and paper company that is headquartered in Stockholm, Sweden.

ON THE WEB

www.sca.com www.torkusa.com

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