Glass plant 50 years and going strong/Tracy Press

by Sam Matthews / Tracy Press

Mar 16, 2012 | 1084 views | 2 | 2 | |

An aerial photo shows the Owens-Illinois glass-container plant when it was opened in March 1962. The original site on the south side of Schulte Road west of Lammers Road totaled 150 acres. Press file photo

Monday will be a milestone for the Owens-Illinois glass-container plant west of town.

It will have been 50 years ago — on March 19, 1962 — that the first glass bottles, in hues of red and gold, began emerging from plant’s three forming machines.

Those first glass containers were Heinz and Del Monte ketchup bottles. And although nearly all ketchup bottles today are made of plastic and beer bottles are made elsewhere, the local O-I plant remains in business concentrating its production on one product line — wine bottles.

The plant produces wine bottles in three shades of green and in a number of shapes to meet the needs of the California wine industry, said Ron Armagost, O-I plant manager for the past six years.

It was two years ago, in 2010, that the last beer bottle left the plant and the shift to wine bottles was made.

The O-I plant started up in March 1962 with 120 employees, half men and half women — and half of whom were local hires, with the balance transferring from other O-I plants, mostly from Oakland.

The local plant, originally a satellite of the one in Oakland, started with one furnace and three forming machines.

Now, with 340 employees, the plant operates with three furnaces and seven more-modern forming machines to produce 1.2 million bottles from 800 tons of glass each day.

As it did from day one in 1962, the plant operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. And from the beginning, most production employees have worked five-day-long rotating shifts. Three crews are on the job around-the-clock on day, swing and graveyard shifts while the fourth is off duty.

According Beth Peery, O-I regional communications manager, 55 percent of the glass is recycled on average.

The original 150-acre site for the plant was purchased in 1961, when construction was started. Robert F. “Bob” Staib, who later became the plant’s first manager, was O-I’s construction-project manager.

In 1969, after the plant was no longer a satellite of the Oakland plant, a second furnace was added. A third furnace went online in 1977, and the warehouse space was expanded from the original 320,000 square feet to 420,000 square feet. Another 240,000 square feet of warehouse space was added in 1984.

Some of the original 150 acres has been sold off for the adjacent biomass energy plant and a leased warehouse with 65.4 acres retained for the plant site.

In 1983, the plant went all-out to produce bottles for the exploding wine-cooler industry, but interest in wine coolers soon subsided.

For a time, the plant produced small baby food bottles and soft-drink bottles with plasti-shield coverings.

Over the years, production of beer bottles became one of the mainstays of the local O-I operation. Budweiser and Michelob bottles were made for Anheuser-Busch’s brewery in Fairfield, and flint (clear) bottles were made for Miller’s California plant. In 2002, Miller Brewing Co. presented the Tracy plant with its Partners in Excellence Award.

At one point in the 1970s, employment hit a peak of close to 700 workers, but that number has steadily declined with the modernization and computerization of equipment.

Both men and women have been part of the workforce since day one, with men staffing the “hot end,” where bottles are made in forming machines, and women in the “cold end.” The types of jobs that women hold have increased over the years.

Within the past year, the Tracy O-I plant has been retrofitted with energy-saving facilities. The projects included re-piping compressed air systems, installing new heat dryers to air systems, upgrading compressor control systems and removing inefficient compressed-air dryers from services.

The greening of the plant has reduced annual electricity use by 6,122,369 kilowatt hours, enough energy to power 575 homes for a year.


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