Former Newark Group paperboard mill sites in Franklin and Middletown, Ohio, purchased by Strikler Scrap Metal Recycling & Demolition, which plans to sell sites to manufacturers from paper, auto or steel industries

Sandy Yang

LOS ANGELES , April 18, 2012 (Industry Intelligence) – The sites of The Newark Group Inc.’s board mills in Franklin and Middletown, Ohio, have recently been purchased by a company that wants to sell them to manufacturers looking to expand, the Middletown Journal reported on April 17.

Strikler Scrap Metal Recycling & Demolition of Canton, Mass., purchased the former Franklin boxboard and Middletown paperboard facilities.

Strikler President Christopher Logan said the sites’ buildings are in good shape and that his company is working with both cities toward finding and filling them with manufacturers that are in the service side of the paper, auto or steel industries. The workforce in Ohio is “abundant,” he said.

Logan declined to release the price of the purchase.

Franklin Boxboard, which produced recycled paperboard and had been in operation for 100 years, closed last August, costing 81 jobs. It size is between 170,000-200,000 square feet.

Logan said 99% of the equipment at the Middletown site was removed upon its closure in 2004. It encompasses an area between 400,000-600,000 square feet.

Middletown’s economic development director, Denise Hamet, said the city wants to clean up the site and that it might be able to assist Strikler with a Clean Ohio grant.

The Newark Group emerged from bankruptcy in August 2010.

The primary source of this article is the Middletown Journal, Middletown, Ohio, on April 17, 2012.

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