Wine bottle maker cutting 16 jobs on exit from Solano County after nearly 2 decades
The North Bay’s largest wine bottle distribution warehouse, run by one of the biggest producers of glass containers globally, is set to close this summer after nearly two decades.
Owens-Brockway Glass Container Inc. is shutting down the 607,000-square-foot facility at 5195 Fermi Drive in Fairfield where the subsidiary of Ohio-based O-I Glass Inc. has stored, packed and distributed glass bottles for the Sonoma and Napa wine market since 2006, the company told the Journal in an email. The current lease on that building expires in July, and the company is consolidating that effort to its Tracy complex, where it operates a glass factory.
The Fairfield closure will impact 16 employees. The company reported it in a state filing April 1, saying the job cuts will happen by the end of next month.
“O-I is working to support these individuals through this transition,” the company said.
Owens-Brockway has been consolidating its Bay Area production and distribution facilities over the past two decades. In 2003, the company announced it would close its nearly 400,000-square-foot Hayward glass plant after a furnace leak, consolidating production to plants in Oakland and Tracy. In 2006 the company shifted distribution from Antioch, Hayward, Oakland and Sacramento to Fairfield. Then about a decade and a half ago, the Oakland plant closed.
Wine bottles made up 21% of O-I Glass net sales of $6.86 billion in 2022, behind beer (33%) but ahead of food products (17%), non-alcohol beverages (15%) and spirits (14%). While higher prices pushed net sales last year up 4% to $7.1 billion, lower consumer demand led producers to work to reduce inventories of bottles, called “destocking,” leading to a 12% decline in shipments from O-I last year, trade journal Packaging Dive reported.
O-I forecast that demand for beer and food glass containers will recover this year faster than for wine and spirits, according to the publication.
While O-I will soon no longer have a North Coast presence for distributing bottles to local vintners, brewers and distillers, there are local wholesalers that carry the company’s containers, according to Journal research. These include All American Containers near Sonoma County airport north of Santa Rosa and Global Package in south Napa, but they also carry containers from other manufacturers.
Other wine-oriented bottle and packaging distributors with North Bay warehouses are Ardaugh Group, Encore Glass, Saxco International, TricorBraun WinePak and M.A. Silva Corks USA.
Modesto-based G3 Enterprises, a distributor for producer Gallo Glass, has a warehouse in south Napa.
France-based wine bottle maker Saverglass, acquired by Australia’s Orora Group in December, in 2020 subleased the former 430,000-square-foot Blue Apron building at Invesco’s Gateway80 project in Fairfield in 2020.
Jeff Quackenbush covers wine, construction and real estate. Reach him at jquackenbush@busjrnl.com or 707-521-4256.
