Owens-Illinois building a plant, engineering center in Peru

3/12/2008

Owens-Illinois Inc., a glass container maker based in suburban Toledo, today said it would invest $30 million to double the capacity of its first new plant outside of the United States in 30 years.

The plant, in Lurin, Peru, began production in October but won't be at full production until 2009, generating 65 jobs.

The firm, with $7.6 billion in revenue last year, will have an engineering center at the Peru plant, splitting work that had been handled by a research group in Perrysburg, the company said. The center is to be operating by summer and create 60 to 80 jobs over the next 18 months.

Building the engineering center seems to differ from company announcements in the past two years that it liked having its global operations together in metro Toledo. The center will allow the Fortune 500 firm to "deliver on our strategy to grow with emerging economies while serving O-I's global engineering needs more efficiently," the company said.

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