Cooper Reopens Ike Affected Factory

Cooper Tire’s Albany factory is back in production and its 1,000 employees working again, the supply of raw materials having resumed several weeks after Hurricane Ike created havoc amongst the region’s industry. “This is a situation that a lot of companies are going through,” commented Cooper Tire vice president of Branding and Communications Pat Brown. “We are trying to make the impact as minimal as possible.”

On October 1 the company issued a press release stating raw materials would be directed towards factories manufacturing products most in demand. While the Albany plant has been a beneficiary of this policy, other Cooper factories, such as those in Texarkana, Arkansas, Tupelo, Mississippi and Clarksdale, Missouri remain out of action. “We have adjusted production levels at all our facilities,” said Cooper Tire director of Investor Relations Curtis Schneekloth. “This is a dynamic situation and we will make adjustments as needed with the scale determined by the circumstances at the time.”

The date these other facilities will resume production has not been given. “As the situation is fluid and partially dependent on demand it is not possible to accurately predict how long this will last,” Schneekloth added.