Printer to Close Carson Plant

Sorg Inc., one of the nation’s largest financial printing companies, said Thursday that it is closing its Kellow-Brown printing plant in Carson and is laying off nearly 140 people.

The firm, which filed for bankruptcy court protection on Aug. 8, also reported a $10.4-million loss for the fiscal year ended May 31. Sorg attributed the loss to a decline in demand for financial printing after the October, 1987, stock market crash and to increased competition in the industry.

Sorg lost $3.6 million from continuing operations in the past fiscal year and an additional $658,000 from discontinued operations. Sales for the latest fiscal year rose to $77.7 million from $70.8 million.

Sorg will begin laying off the 138 Kellow-Brown workers on Sept. 12 and the terminations should be finished by Sept. 26, Sorg Vice President David L. Rosenstein said. Sorg has not revealed the cost of the closure, he said. Sorg employs about 650 people nationwide.

Kellow-Brown, which Sorg bought two years ago, was responsible for $14 million in software printing during the fiscal year and a small amount of financial printing, Rosenstein said. Software printing is a growing business producing the manuals, inserts and packaging that go with computer software, he said.

“It’s a good business,” he said. “It’s just a business that requires capital that Sorg doesn’t have at this time for a business that’s peripheral to its main business.”

Sorg has been expanding its West Coast operations since mid-1987 and even moved Kellow-Brown out of East Los Angeles into a larger leased factory in Carson to handle new business--business that did not materialize.

Sorg will keep a sizable administrative, sales and typesetting operation for its financial printing unit in downtown Los Angeles and a large plant in San Francisco, Rosenstein said. The firm also has printing plants in Chicago and at its Manhattan headquarters.

“It’s always a puzzlement when it happens,” said Doug Maloney, president of Graphic Communications International Local 404, which represents 40 lithographers at the factory. “It’s like a doctor telling you that you might have something but when it happens, well, there it is.”

Maloney said the union will meet with company representatives to negotiate severance packages for the workers.