“If you couldn’t see it coming you weren’t looking,” said a job seeker, who asked to only be identified as a maintenance mechanic for International Paper, of the company’s recent closures in Savannah and Riceboro.
He shared this insight on the floor of the Enmarket Arena during the Regional Industry Support Enterprise (RISE) Job Palooza on Thursday.
Three of his colleagues standing with him agreed that signs like reduced production and other mill closures in the southeastern United States hinted that the industry was shifting. He and his colleagues have been offered severance packages by International Paper, but were still technically employed as of Thursday. They attended the job fair seeking “lateral or forward” career moves with registered employers.
While the mechanics are a specific segment of International Paper employees, their plans represent what Savannah Area Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Bert Brantley alluded to back on Aug. 22 following news of the closures. “There’s not one solution for 1,100 people…there are 1,100 solutions.”
The Job Palooza has been one early response by local economic and workforce development leaders such as RISE, the Savannah Economic Development Authority (SEDA) and fellow authorities in surrounding counties to address what experts have indicated could be a jobs impact two to five times greater in worst-case scenarios than that initial 1,100.
RISE Job Palooza: Job fair follows news of International Paper’s Savannah, Riceboro closures
IP closure annoucement: International Paper to shutter Savannah facilities; operations to cease by end of September
Ripple effects of International Paper closures
Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor Christopher Luettgen pointed out that International Paper represented one aspect of a complex paper industry stream flowing throughout the state.
The headwaters of that stream begin with forest landowners. Loggers work the land then pass the timber on to logging truck drivers who deliver to mills like International Paper’s to become pulp or other products.
Georgia Forestry Association President and CEO Tim Lowrimore said about 6,000 truckloads of woodchips per week will be stalled due to the Savannah and Riceboro mills closures as well as that of Georgia-Pacific’s Early County mill, which shuttered earlier this summer. He said initial industry estimates predict a $3 billion economic loss to the state. Timber will soon have no place to go. “It’s about 8 million tons of wood demand that will be lost from those three facilities,” he said.
Contrary to the International Paper maintenance mechanics’ assessment, the Savannah and Riceboro mill closures came as a shock to local leaders like Brantley, Savannah Mayor Van Johnson and SEDA President Trip Tollison. However, Luettgen said the mill industry has been in a phase of “internal review” for some time. He noted three mill closures in the Florida panhandle over the past 18 months as yet another sign. He said companies have been weighing whether to keep aging facilities running or invest in expansion and innovation, such as International Paper indicated in its closure announcement.
“I think there is truth to the fact that the Savannah mill was getting old,” Luettgen said. “It wasn’t necessarily meeting its financial metrics, and that’s the cause of this.”
Luettgen added the boxboard market has softened recently. He said that consumer spending being down has played a factor. If people are buying fewer products then fewer products need to be packaged and shipped. He said the consumer confidence dip is likely due, in part, to instability in the economy because of uncertainty around the long-term effects of the Trump Administration’s tariff changes.
The market softening may be also reflected in International Paper’s strategic moves—the Southeast Georgia closures will result in a 1 million ton reduction in its containerboard production, the company said in a press release announcing the closures. Containerboard converted to boxes outside of International Paper would likely impact other independent containerboard converters, Luettgen said.
If that’s the case then that would be one of many other downstream ripples impacting the paper industry.
Optimistic outlook?
Hyundai MOBIS was one of the many employers in attendance during the Rise Job Palooza on Thursday, September 11, 2025 at enmarket Arena.
International Paper’s announcement certainly had historic implications. Georgia Southern University Fuller E. Callaway Professor of Economics Michael Toma was “hard-pressed to think of a large-scale closure like that in Savannah” going back more than 25 years. He also said, though, that the closures do not lend well to historical comparison.
He cited the roughly $10 billion of regional investment in the automotive manufacturing industry by Hyundai, its affiliates and suppliers as a “unique case.” Thanks to the investment along with opportunities at established employers such as Gulfstream, JCB and the Georgia Ports Authority, the industrial labor market in the southeast region has remained around 3% unemployment. That means the region may be suited to absorb such a significant job loss. For workers based in Riceboro and Liberty County, however, Toma acknowledged that the closures’ effects may be “amplified because of the smaller nature of that localized labor market.”
He said how quickly job losses are mitigated across the region by other employers remains to be known based on whether they stick to previous hiring projections or if the closures motivate employers to reexamine hiring strategies.
“We certainly have a need for workers who understand the nature of the manufacturing environment, certainly those folks would have an attractive set of job skills to firms in the Hyundai supply or at Hyundai itself,” he said.
It is important to note that Toma made his statements to the Savannah Morning News on Aug. 25, a week before the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s operation at HL-GA Battery Company on the Hyundai megasite.
At Thursday’s fair, though, employers and seekers seemed optimistic about meeting their mutual goals.
Hyundai Steel Human Resource (HR) and General Affairs Manager Ashley Scott said that the most transferrable roles from International Paper applicants that she had seen early on were quality assurance and production supervisor professionals. Kelly Peppers, a recruiting manager for JCB, said senior supervisors as well as those with production floor and purchasing experience aligned with JCB’s needs. The City of Savannah was on hand with multiple open positions, and were specifically interested in filling spots within wastewater reclamation, maintenance, and equipment operations.
SNF’s Director of HR Fred Tucker said the Riceboro-based employer of 1,300+ was seeking to fill 40-50 positions. He said SNF, “world leader in water soluble polymer,” has entry-level and advanced chemical operator positions available among others.
Tucker said the company has been working with RISE for some time and jumped at the opportunity to be at the fair. He added that applicants would exhibit transferrable qualities such as manufacturing safety awareness, stable work histories and an understanding of shift work even if they did not have direct experience in SNF’s field.
As of 11 a.m., there were about 100 International Paper employees at Job Palooza, and the group of International Paper maintenance mechanics also shared that the lateral moves they sought would be a $40-plus an hour role, while a forward move would be a manager position at about $125,000 annually. They felt confident they would find new opportunities among the over 120 employers recruiting at Enmarket Arena on Thursday.
“I mean, I have to work,” said one of the mechanics.
He and job seekers from the eight RISE-member counties are invited to return to the arena for the second day of Job Palooza from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 12.
Joseph Schwartzburt is the education and workforce development reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at JSchwartzburt@gannett.com and JoeInTheKnow_SMN on Instagram. Evan Lasseter is the city of Savannah and Chatham County reporter for the Savannah Morning News. You can reach him at ELasseter@savannahnow.com.
This article originally appeared on Savannah Morning News: International Paper’s closures bring about Job Palooza in Savannah