2 New Plants To Bring Hundreds Of Jobs To Falls Twp.

FALLS TOWNSHIP, PA — A pair of new industrial plants in Falls are expected to bring hundreds of new jobs to the township.

Monday night, Falls Township Supervisors approved two land development plans for the projects.

The first was approval for construction of a 254,699-square-foot warehouse and a 300,000-square-foot recycling facility by Alro Steel Corporation. The second was for work on a 33-acre parcel on the former U.S. Steel site where Empire Fiber plans to build a recovered fiber pulp manufacturing plant.

Once complete, the Alro Steel warehouse is expected to employ 75-100 workers. The recycling facility will be built over a 17-month period, employing 150-200 construction workers, and is expected to employ another 100-110 full-time workers once it is at full operation.

For the warehouse, Alro will be consolidating two vacant properties in the heavy industrial district. Alro Steel has been in business since 1948 and operates more than 70 locations in 12 states.

Company officials say they'll be hiring mostly for warehouse positions, as well as some administrative staff, a general manager, a warehouse superintendent, an inside sales manager and an operations manager.

Empire Fiber's facilities will be on Middle Drive, in the township's materials-processing and manufacturing district.

Jim Austin, the company’s CEO and president, told supervisors that the site was chosen in large partbbecause of its easy access to land and water transport. Empire will either ship 60 containers of pulp out of the plant every day by barge at the KIPC site or haul product by truck to the Port of Newark and transport on container ships.

"The beauty of the site is that we do not have to pass the residences coming and going to this property," Austin said, adding that not impacting your community is "the only way to run a business."

Once it's up and running, the facility will recycle old corrugated containers and mixed paper products into recycled paper. Plans call for processing 500,000 tons of material from Waste Management, Republic Services and other trash and recycling haulers.

The company anticipates total annual revenues of $135-$150 million and a $6.2 million per year payroll, according to Austin.

Austin said his company’s recycling operation is virtually odorless.

"You won’t hear it running and won’t smell it, he said.

The plant would operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said.