Chillicothe — Reprising his positivism three days after the April 15th announcement that the Pixelle paper mill was closing – when owner H.I.G. Capital said they would delay the closure – U.S. Senator Bernie Moreno dominated the news conference three days after the new owner, an Illinois glove company, took possession on October 7th.
Having ownership for only three days, new mill owner “U.S. Paper Mill Company,” a subsidiary of “U.S. Medical Glove Company,” hosted an upbeat news conference on Friday in front of two glove production lines already installed.
With many workers in the crowd of maybe 175 in the former shipping warehouse along 8th Street, it was a better conclusion to the fate of Chillicothe’s paper mill than many expected.
Towards the end of the news conference, Robin Bernstein, investor in the glove company, gave a brief statement…before Moreno returned to the podium, offering to answer questions from the audience.
Hear from Bernstein in an interview in a separate story, and hear Moreno in his own words in the below video. (Moreno (R) was a businessman in Greater Cleveland before defeating longtime U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D) in 2024.)
Moreno spoke on behalf of the glove company, including co-owner John Todoroki, to share some numbers. Moreno said they closed on the deal at 3pm Tuesday – and now on Friday afternoon, they already have production lines set up…after doing major cleaning, because they must have pride in the working environment.
He pointed out that there should have been major intervention in the facility five to eight years ago to keep the mill in good working order.
Moreno said U.S. Medical Glove Company mobilized 45 workers from the corporate facility in Illinois, and have already hired 60 more, to work in Chillicothe – and their safety vests stood out in the crowd. He pointed out that the Chillicothe facility will be a ramp-up in company production, not just a division of it.
(See my pan of the crowd and the former paper warehouse starting at 4:10 in my video.)
Moreno said Todoroki did all this with no public money, only their private funds. He also said the glove company will donate all medical gloves needed by the city’s first responders.
Moreno said he also wants to see them make the gloves for federal government agency needs, like for the Veterans Administration, Transportation Security Administration (TSA), and Health & Human Services.
As for the glove company’s subsidiary that owns the former Pixelle property, the “U.S. Paper Mill Company,”Moreno said the glove company has never made their own boxes, instead bringing them in from Mexico – but there is hope to make them in the former paper mill.
He said the chemicals to make the gloves will come from Cincinnati, and production will start in a few weeks. (I was told that about 13 more production lines might be installed.)
Moreno said he will consider this a total success after the company goes through all the laid-off Pixelle workers to offer employment. He said some of them certainly felt cheated on pension and vacation promises, and the company will work to restore those – “to make everybody at least whole or better.”
Moreno said he did not want to see an employer here that replaced the 800-plus employees of Pixelle at half of the pay. And, he said he personally could see 1,000 workers here.
While the original Pixelle closure was stated as two months after April 15th – on April 18th, Moreno said he had chastised the H.I.G. CEO…who relented and set the shutdown to the end of the year…on the morning of a news conference that was set to be a downer, but instead became a rally.
Though layoffs and closures ran through the summer – with almost total shutdown about August 10th – U.S. Medical Glove Company is said to have moved quickly through September and October to buy the entire site on October 7th…and have two glove production lines installed three days later for the news conference.
Watch for more videos and stories from Friday’s event.
