Closure of Quanah plant impacts city’s economy

News Channel 6 Now
By Chantale Belefanti
Published: Feb. 22, 2023 at 6:14 PM CST

QUANAH, Texas (KAUZ) - A major employer in Hardeman County is set to permanently close its doors next week.

The Georgia-Pacific Quanah Acme Gypsum plant employs over 160 people. Although the plant is closing, they’re not leaving without making sure their employees and the City of Quanah is okay.

This comes because the plant has been in the City of Quanah for years. As a business, they’ve invested a lot into the community and the judge of Hardeman County said with the plant closing the city will see the effects of it all.

“I hate to see it. They’ve been a part of the Quanah history for a hundred years and more.,” said Hardeman County Judge Ronald Ingram.

Two years ago, Georgia-Pacific announced to their employees and to the City of Quanah that the Texas gypsum plant would be closing. Now, that time has come. According to the Hardeman County Judge Ronald Ingram, the plant is one of the top three biggest employers in the city.

“It’s gonna change the atmosphere of the people that live here, the people that have been here and they’ve always been a great contributor to the community and to the county,” said Judge Ingram.

Georgia-Pacific announced it would be retiring the plant and shifting production to other company facilities. Current employees were offered the chance to work at other facilities.

“It is an aging facility that is beyond reasonable capital investments and so that was a big driving force as to why we’re retiring the facility,” said Yana Olgetree Public Affairs Manager of Georgia-Pacific.

The company is also offering to pay employees a severance package for 30 additional days after their employment ends.

“It’s gonna leave us with a hole where we really need to get out and hustle and find some more businesses. One of the issues that we’ve had here over the years is workforce and trying to find workforce and now we’re gonna have workforce without a place to go I think,” added Judge Ingram.

44 employees of the plant took the opportunity to go back to school with company-paid tuition, according to the Georgia-Pacific.

“We actually had a lot of employees take advantage of that. They went to school, they got their certificates or associate’s degree and hopefully have some viable employment. We want to make sure we’re doing all we can to help our employees and our communities thrive after we leave there,” said Olgetree.

Ingram said employees won’t be the only ones affected. The city will see a steep tax cut as well.

“The tax base for the county and the school system, they have a value of about $23 million and so you take that tax base out of the budget of the school and the county. That’s gonna hurt the school and the county,” said Judge Ingram.

The plant is scheduled to close on Feb. 28.

Georgia-Pacific officials asked the City of Quanah what they needed to sustain themselves in the future.

Their response was to create an economic tourism center to help rebuild the city. Ingram said this is extremely important for Quanah because of the overall investment the plant has made in the city for so many years.

“We’re trying to rebuild the downtown area get it back in shape,” Ingram said. “The mayor had the idea, let’s do a community center because we weren’t sure what we wanted to ask for and so the local foundation 3RF has given us a building downtown and we’re working on remodeling it,” said Ronald Ingram, Judge of Hardeman County.

Ingram said this was a gracious offer from Georgia-Pacific. The employees that work in Hardeman County also purchase from businesses that are local shops, which helps the city financially.