After 30 years, jobs at Ringgold bottle plant remain secure

Through economic downturns and company layoffs, a bottle manufacturer here has provided a needed product and relative job security since the 1970s.

The Owens-Illinois plant in Ringgold opened up and began producing bottles 30 years ago for the Miller brewing facility in Eden, N.C., and later for Gerber, which has since closed. It continues to meet demand for beer breweries in Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia and Ohio.

Eighty percent of the 155 employees at the Ringgold location have been there for at least 29 years and some helped start the operation in 1978, plant manager Lloyd Taylor said.

He said the employees at the plant are like a small community.

“Here, you’re either working with a family member or a neighbor,” Taylor said during an interview and tour of the plant Thursday as part of its 30th anniversary celebration.

An era is passing at the facility as many employees approach retirement.

For a few area residents looking for work, the departures could be an opportunity.

“The challenge for us in five years is replacing those folks as they retire,” Taylor said, adding that the plant’s only layoffs so far were in 1993.

‘A family-oriented plant’

O-I’s employees said they pride themselves on being one big family. Linda Walker, materials manager at the plant, has worked at the facility for 29 years.

“You’ll see a very family-oriented plant with many older workers.” she said.

Jimmy Wilkerson, a plant mechanic, has a special connection to the land O-I sits on at Glassblower Lane. His family owned it and grew tobacco on it for about 30 years before they sold the property to Brockway in 1977, he said.

For Wilkerson, the move was a blessing because he knew tobacco farming was in decline.

“I was very fortunate to get in with something more dependable than tobacco,” Wilkerson, who’s worked at O-I for 30 years, said Thursday.

Harold Piercy, a furnace attendant who began at I-O on Nov. 20, 1978, remembers helping finish construction of the building with his new co-workers before operations started. He said the atmosphere was like a “Marine platoon.”

“Everybody stuck together and made new friends,” Piercy said. “People here look after each other.”

When a fellow worker is in the hospital or enduring a similar hardship, employees hold fundraisers to help out, he said.

The employees have witnessed changes at the plant that started as Brockway Glass Co. in 1978. O-I, then Owens-Illinois Inc., bought Brockway Inc. in 1988.

O-I, based in Perrysburg, Ohio, has 83 plants worldwide with about 20 in North America, Taylor said. It’s net sales in 2007 were $7.6 billion.

From jars to bottles

Over the years, the Ringgold facility has produced peanut-butter jars, jelly jars, pickle jars, soda bottles and handled bottles for apple juice and acids used in labs. O-I now focuses on making beer bottles in its 225,000-square-foot plant for Coors, Anheuser-Busch and Miller, its largest customers.

O-I puts out 2 million bottles a day in Ringgold, molding them from a mix of sand, soda ash, limestone and recycled glass, which makes up 60 percent of the final product, Taylor said. The glass comes from curbside pick-up and bars in North Carolina, Michigan, Georgia and Pennsylvania.

Using recycled glass reduces emissions and energy costs, Taylor said. O-I is incorporating more green practices in its operations, including recycling plastic and cardboard, Walker said.

The bottle ingredients are heated up to 2,800 degrees Fahrenheit in a 1,494-square-foot furnace, the largest in North America, and formed into molten glass. The glass is then cut into gobs and sent to molding machines where they’re shaped into bottles, Taylor said. The three molding machines make 1,370 bottles a minute.

Next comes the annealing process, where the bottles move through a tunnel, are slowly heated to 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and cooled for about 35 minutes for strength. They are then sprayed with a slick, protective coating that prevents scratches.

The bottles are inspected automatically by machines for defects, checks and impurities, Taylor said. Employees also inspect a few manually. The bottles are packaged in cartons or in bulk, warehoused in the facility and then shipped, Taylor said.

Deborah Sadler, a 30-year employee, is a specifications tester, checking bottles for height, diameter, thickness, weight and capacity. She said she loves her job.

“I didn’t plan on going to work in a factory, but after two weeks, I knew I could make a good living,” Sadler said.

Contact John R. Crane at or (434) 791-7987.