By May 2007, Owens-Illinois Inc. will have moved from the center to the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, the city it has called home for most of its 103-year existence.
“I“m sorry to see it happen”, was the…
By May 2007, Owens-Illinois Inc. will have moved from the center to the suburbs of Toledo, Ohio, the city it has called home for most of its 103-year existence. “I“m sorry to see it happen”, was the verdict of 93-year-old shareholder and former O-I executive Charles Husum as he left what could be the firm“s last annual shareholders meeting in central Toledo. However, he said he does not object to the company“s plan to leave its current headquarters location, One SeaGate. Chief Executive Steve McCracken, who took the decision to move 363 employees to O-I“s Perrysburg campus in the outskirts of Toledo, acknowledged that the soon-to-be completed USD 20 million headquarters there does not include an auditorium large enough to hold the shareholders meeting, although he pointed out that O-I will still call the Toledo area home. At the shareholder meeting, attended by about 100 people, most of them employees, Mr. McCracken provided an update on efforts to increase sales, improve profitability, reduce debt, and raise O-I“s share price. “We“re on track”, he said. “We“re making progress”. He acknowledged, however, that the firm has run into “headwinds” caused by rising costs for energy, raw materials, and labor. The firm reported USD 559 million in losses in 2005 on sales of USD 7.2 billion, which were up 14% from 2004. Mr. McCracken said the losses were caused primarily by non-cash accounting charges resulting from devaluation of Australian operations and from deferred income taxes. Key to the management growth strategy is capitalizing on consumer preferences for glass, which accounts for just 8% of packaging-product sales now. Research shows that people believe beverages taste better from glass bottles and that glass is purer than competing products. Other 2005 developments included the opening of a bottle plant in Windsor, Colorado, in August. “It“s exceeded project expectations by a good amount”, the chief executive said. O-I expects to begin moving headquarter“s workers to Perrysburg in June 2006, with most of them relocated by August. O-I employee Jim Weber, a 38-year veteran of the company, took a pragmatic view of the move from the old headquarters and the possibility that shareholders will not return to downtown Toledo in 2007. “We need to be one O-I”, he said as he left the meeting. “We“re operating in two facilities. It“s not practical to move the engineers to a downtown location. That work doesn“t lend itself to a commercial downtown setting”.