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P&G to Close KCK Plant

Procter and Gamble will close its Kansas City, Kansas plant by 2020 the company announced Wednesday.

The Our Dish Care business will be moved to Tabler Station, West Virginia by mid-2020 with the full closure of the KCK site by the end of 2020.  According to Fox4 employees of the plant were told to go home around 2:30 on Tuesday but be back for a meeting early Wednesday morning.  That’s when the company made the official announcement.

P&G is the second major manufacturer to announce the closure of a Kansas City area plant in the last couple of weeks.  Harley Davidson announced it was closing their assembly plant near KCI airport a week ago.  

Procter and Gamble employs about 900 people in the area with around half of them working at the plant.

Below is the full release from Procter and Gamble outlining their reasoning for the closure:

We shared with employees today that we will transfer production of Our Dish Care business from our site in Kansas City, Kansas to our new facility at Tabler Station, West Virginia. This is planned to be complete by mid-2020 and will result in the closure of the Kansas City plant in late 2020.

Decisions like this are never easy, but we are communicating this decision more than two years in advance to help our employees plan for the future. We are committed to supporting P&G people through the transition in a manner consistent with our values and principles.

We will negotiate with the local labor union regarding support to help employees transition to opportunities, whether that be transfers to other P&G sites or beyond P&G.

For additional context, today’s announcement is the result of a study started in 2013 across our North American supply network to help us more efficiently and effectively serve retailers and consumers across the country. The new site is being master-planned to be a large, multi-category facility much bigger than the Kansas City plant, with strategic suppliers co-located on site, closer to three mega-distribution centers and presenting significant scale opportunities to develop solutions for channels and customers across categories that would not be feasible/ cost effective for smaller sites.

Additional information shared with employees today:

  • Our Hair Care (shampoo and conditioner) and Personal Cleansing (body wash) businesses will transfer from our site in Iowa City, Iowa to our new facility at Tabler Station, West Virginia. These transfers will be completed in late 2020.
  • As a result of these decisions, the estimate of full-time P&G employees at our new site in Tabler Station, West Virginia will increase from 700 to 900 by 2020.