The Sapa Aluminum Extrusion plant on East U.S. 6 will close by Nov. 1, affecting the 79 employees who still work there.
Formerly the Alumax and Alcoa facilty, it has operated under the Sapa name since 2007. The company announced the closing to employees around Aug. 12.
Charlie Straface, general manager of Sapa Industrial Extrusions, said the Morris plant had been operating on low volumes and low profitability for several quarters. It provided extruded aluminum parts for the the car and truck trailer industry.
"While this was a difficult decision, and we realize change is never easy for our employees or customers, we are convinced that we can enhance our product and service offerings to customers currently being served from Morris," said Tim Stubbs, business president of Sapa Profiles North America.
In July, Sapa completed the purchase of Indalex, an aluminum extrusion company with 11 plants – six in the United States and five in Canada – for $95 million. Indalex has 29 presses with a capacity of 315,000 tons of aluminum per year.
The acquisition of Indalex made the Morris plant unnecessary.
"We can now provide customers with even better service from other facilities available as a result of the recent acquisition of Indalex," Sapa said in a statement.
Alcoa and Sapa entered into a joint venture in June of 2007, and the Morris plant has since operated as Sapa Industrial Extrusions.
Alumax constructed the original 840,000 square-foot plant in 1968, as a rolling mill for the production of aluminum sheets and plates. Alumax closed the facility in 1994, then re-opened it in October 1997 as an extrusion operation under Alumax Extrusion Inc.
At that time, the facility had one extrusion press, which made car radiator supports. A second was added in 1998 for extruded truck trailer and coal rail car components. With the addition of the second press, employment was reported at 300 and, by 2002, was at 330.
At its peak, production at the Morris plant hit 85 million pounds of finished product, but had declined in recent years.
The plant specialized in large circle shapes with the ability to produce large custom structural hollows (tubes).
In 1998, Alcoa acquired Alumax for $3.8 billion, and the Morris plant operated under the Alcoa name until the 2007 joint venture with Sapa.
Graphic Packaging on Armstrong Street in Morris has closed with the loss of 179 jobs, and it was announced in July the ITW Jemco plant in Minooka will close by March, with the loss of 22 jobs.