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IWCO Direct to Close Elm City, North Carolina Plant
Chanhassen, Minn. (October 23, 2008) –IWCO Direct, the nation’s leading provider of integrated direct mail production services and marketing solutions, has announced it will immediately close its facility in Elm City, North Carolina and will transfer equipment and production operations to three other IWCO Direct facilities in Minnesota.
IWCO Direct acquired the Elm City facility from Cox Target Media in 2007 to add new capacity to support increased use of IWCO Direct’s total package platform. The dramatic decline in mail volume in 2008 has lowered utilization for acquisition mail that was the focus of the Elm City operation. The company believes specific market segments will remain at lower utilization levels for the near future.
By shifting all operations to Minnesota, IWCO Direct will be able to cost-effectively support 200 million mail packages each month. At the same time, IWCO Direct’s Minnesota-based AMP™ platform is expanding to support the shift to trigger-based, loyalty, and retention programs.
“These are difficult actions we must take to aggressively and preemptively react to the industry-wide decline in volume. We will navigate these market dynamics to continue to create exceptional value for our associates, customers, and business partners,” said Jim Andersen, IWCO Direct president and CEO. “These steps will allow us to match our production capacity for high volume mail to current demand levels while further expanding our new AMP platform. The result will be enhanced operating efficiencies, utilization, and productivity to deliver both postage optimization and low cost, high value marketing solutions.”
The Elm City facility has 380 employees who will be provided pay and benefits continuity and outplacement support or, in some cases, employment opportunities in IWCO Direct’s Minnesota facilities. Minnesota operations will expand with approximately 250 new positions.
About IWCO Direct
IWCO Direct (www.iwco.com) has served the direct marketing needs of North American companies for more than 35 years. IWCO Direct is one of the nation’s fastest growing providers of direct marketing solutions, providing direct marketing like no one else by seamlessly supplying all direct mail production services – print, envelope, plastic, mailing, automated marketing, and data services – in an integrated “total package” supply chain solution. IWCO Direct pioneered commingling and continues to provide its customers with dramatic postage savings and faster time to market through its proprietary IWCO P.O.S.T. (Postal Optimization Strategy and Technologies) and RideShare™ commingling and logistics management programs, as well as AMP™, its automated marketing program platform.
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