Survey will study impact of mill closure
When Pactiv Evergreen shuts its doors in a few short months, about 1,000 employees will be out of work. And while that number is devastating, it doesn’t begin to show the full picture.
Haywood County government, the Chamber of Commerce and local economist Tom Tveidt are teaming up to understand just how far-reaching the impact of the mill’s closure will be.
“How’s the closure of Evergreen going to impact our community, short term and long term? We really don’t know,” said CeCe Hipps, executive director of the Haywood County Chamber of Commerce.
The Haywood County Chamber of Commerce, in partnership with Haywood County government, will conduct a survey for businesses that may be impacted by the closure of Pactiv Evergreen. The survey will be conducted by Tom Tveidt of Syneva Economics.
The idea is to get a grasp on just how many businesses in the area are economically connected to Pactiv Evergreen and to what extent.
“An economic impact analysis is a spending model, and it follows spending dollars through a local economy,” said Tveidt.
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The survey will be short, just six questions, and will ask business owners and operators whether they sell products or services directly to the mill, the annual dollar value of products or services sold and the percentage of total sales, among other things.
“The obvious thing is the mill and the mill workers which most people have heard about, but the greater impact, which I’ll be measuring, is the local suppliers, the income that goes to those suppliers and then of course, the income to the workers and how that is spent in the local economy,” said Tveidt. “So it’s the broader and sort of deeper look at really how the closure will impact the economy, which is not as apparent just from the announcements.”
At this point, the survey is designed for Haywood County businesses but may eventually be broadened to include Jackson and Buncombe County businesses as well.
Surveys will begin going out over the next couple of days. All 400 of the chamber’s members will receive the survey and all businesses in the county are invited to partake. The more responses the survey can garner, the more accurate picture the results will display.
“This will help clarify things to a lot of folks how deep the connections are in their local economy to something as big as the mill that’s been here for over 100 years now,” said Tveidt.
To complete survey click HERE.
