The Taylorville Kiwanis Club heard about the Taylorville Ahlstrom Filtration Plant at their Tuesday noon meeting at the Moose Lodge.
Abby Wilhelm has been the plant’s Human Resources Director for 18 months, and been in the H-R field for some 10 years. She told Kiwanis members that Ahlstrom is a global company headquartered in Finland with 36 plants across 13 countries serving 6-thousand customers. She added their products are used in over one hundred countries.
Wilhelm also said the Taylorville plant was first built in the 1800’s for paper bag manufacturing, and was purchased by Hopper Paper in the 1920’s. Georgia-Pacific later purchased the plant, then idled it in 1994. Ahlstrom purchased the Taylorville plant in 1995.
Wilhelm told the Kiwanis Club the local facility has around one hundred employees, with 18 management and 83 hourly employees. The Taylorville plant manufactures some 19-point-8 million metric tons of paper a year, producing the paper that goes into many of the air and oil filters sold by many major brands.
It’s also one of the City of Taylorville’s largest water customers, using some 7-point-5 million gallons of water a month in their paper manufacturing process.
She also said the local Ahlstrom plant is looking to expand its market by possibly manufacturing paper for specialty filters for diesel engines.
The Taylorville Kiwanis Club is part of a global organization of volunteers dedicated to improving the world one child and one community at a time. Weekly meetings are held Tuesdays at noon at the Taylorville Moose Lodge. For information on the club, go to taylorvillekiwanis.com.
