Pennslyvania Governor Tom Wolf announced Wednesday that the CANPACK Group will redevelop a former brownfield site in Lackawanna County, establishing an aluminum can manufacturing facility and North American Center of Excellence.
An international manufacturer of aluminum and steel cans and glass bottles for the food and beverage sector and a subsidiary of Pennsylvania-based GIORGI GLOBAL HOLDINGS, INC., CANPACK Group’s investment will create 400 new jobs for Pennsylvanians.
CANPACK’s commitment includes the acquisition and demolition of a blighted 1 million-square-foot facility on a 102-acre brownfield site in Olyphant Borough, where it will establish a 908,000-square-foot aluminum can manufacturing facility and operations center, including a customer experience center portraying CANPACK’s R&D and lithographic capabilities, its first in the United States.
The company has pledged to invest nearly $366 million into the project and will create more than 400 executive, professional and technical manufacturing jobs within three years. This project marks the ninth largest capital investment in the Governor Action Team’s history, bringing regional executive-level positions and the largest manufacturing project in the Greater Scranton Area since Proctor & Gamble in 1966.
“Since we first invested in CANPACK over 30 years ago, it has grown from a single steel food can manufacturing site in Poland to a true multinational packaging manufacturer with nearly 8,000 employees and 28 manufacturing sites located in Europe, South America, India, the Middle East, and Africa. We are extremely excited to bring CANPACK into the United States, the world’s largest aluminum beverage can market,” said Peter Giorgi, president and CEO of Giorgi Global Holdings, Inc.
“CANPACK is a great company with a phenomenal growth platform and we are absolutely thrilled to be entering the US market where we will be better able to serve our global customers’ beverage can needs,” added Roberto Villaquiran, CANPACK’s CEO. “In addition, investing in the conversion of a brownfield site to a state-of-the-art aluminum can manufacturing facility and operations center, which creates local jobs and benefits the community, is consistent with CANPACK’s focus on sustainability and being a responsible corporate citizen that gives back to the local community.”
For this important brownfield redevelopment project, CANPACK received a proposal from the Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED) for $6 million in Redevelopment Assistance Capital Project (RACP) funding. The project was coordinated by the Governor’s Action Team, an experienced group of economic development professionals who report directly to the governor and work with businesses that are considering locating or expanding in Pennsylvania.
The CANPACK Group is a global group of packaging companies with its operational headquarters in Krakow, Poland. The CANPACK Group’s operations include aluminum can manufacturing, glass bottle production, the manufacture of food and industrial packaging, and the production of crown caps. CANPACK’s ultimate parent is GIORGI GLOBAL HOLDINGS, INC., a global holding company with its operational headquarters in Blandon, Pennsylvania and with operations in the agricultural, food and packaging sectors.
