Sustaining jobs in a hard-hit Virginia town
Essel Propack America opened its Danville factory to supply laminated tubes to companies such as Sundial Brands, Proctor & Gamble and Unilever. These tubes and caps are used in packaging products for oral care, cosmetics, and food service. Today, if you brush with Crest toothpaste you may have handled a Danville-made tube.
The Essel Group, Essel Propack’s parent, is the largest specialty packaging company worldwide with 35 percent of the global market and manufacturing locations around the world. The Danville facility needed to consolidate two existing locations and expand—without funding for this needed change, this plant may have been relocated outside Virginia.
Since the collapse of the textile and tobacco industries here, the city has maintained one of the highest rates of unemployment in the Commonwealth. Working with the Danville Industrial Authority, this facility renovation saved 260 jobs and created 50 new jobs.