An Illinois company has bought the historic paper mill in Chillicothe that closed over the summer and plans to repurpose the site to manufacture medical gloves, according to two local sources.
Officials are planning to announce during an event in Chillicothe on Friday that U.S. Medical Glove Co. has bought the site.
The company was formed in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic to be a domestic supplier of gloves and other personal protective equipment. It recently opened a plant in Cincinnati and is a federal contractor, having provided PPE to the U.S. military and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Local union leaders previously have described how the company would use the mill’s existing paper manufacturing equipment to make the cardboard boxes used to package and ship the gloves. Making boxes does not appear to be the plan for the site at the moment, sources said, although it could be in the future.
The paper mill had operated in some form or another for 175 years before it closed in August, dealing an economic and psychological blow to Chillicothe, a city of about 22,000 people located around an hour south of Columbus. Its most recent corporate owner, Pixelle Specialty Solutions, first announced the closure in April, attributing the decision to declining demand for the specialty paper the plant produced.
After Ohio Sen. Bernie Moreno and other officials intervened, Pixelle agreed to delay the shutdown until the end of the year — but the company ultimately went back on its word.
The closure has been portrayed as a symbol of the economic struggles of manufacturing cities in the Midwest, including in a short documentary by a left-leaning political advocacy group.
The mill employed 750 people when its closure was first announced in April, making it one of the area’s largest employers. The closure also has negatively affected Ohio’s timber industry, which had long supplied the plant.