Graham Packaging Company, L.P., will close two plants -- one in Lakeland, Florida, and the other in Montgomery, Alabama -- as customer volume has shifted to other locations. Approximately 20 jobs will be affected.

The company's McCue Road container plant in Lakeland is scheduled to close October 9. Several of the 15 hourly employees will be transferred to the company's County Line Road plant in Lakeland. The remainder will be eligible for severance packages and given an opportunity to post for jobs at company plants in other locations.

Graham Packaging's plant in Montgomery, Alabama, is scheduled to stop production November 1. About a dozen employees were laid off there at the end of August. Of the remaining nine employees, four will be transferred to other plants and the rest offered severance packages.

Production of containers made at the two affected plants will be moved to other plants in Graham Packaging's network. The company has approximately 6,300 employees in North America and 7,800 worldwide.

Graham Packaging, based in York, Pennsylvania, is a worldwide leader in the design, manufacture, and sale of technology-based, customized blow-molded plastic containers for the branded food and beverage, household, personal care/specialty, and automotive lubricants product categories. The company has an extensive blue-chip customer base that includes many of the world's largest branded consumer products companies. It produces more than 20 billion container units annually at 83 plants in North America, Europe, and South America, and had sales of $2.49 billion in 2007.

Graham Packaging is a leading U.S. supplier of plastic containers for hot-fill juice and juice drinks, sports drinks, drinkable yogurt and smoothies, nutritional supplements, wide-mouth food, dressings, condiments, and beers; the leading global supplier of plastic containers for yogurt drinks; a leading supplier of plastic containers for liquid fabric care products, dish care products, and hard-surface cleaners; and the leading supplier in the U.S., Canada, and Brazil of one-quart/one-liter plastic motor oil containers.

The Blackstone Group of New York is the majority owner of Graham Packaging. Graham Packaging on July 1, 2008, executed an equity purchase agreement with Hicks Acquisition Company I, Inc., under which Graham Packaging would combine with Hicks Acquisition, a Dallas-based special purpose acquisition company. The transaction with Hicks Acquisition, in partnership with the Blackstone Group and other Graham equity holders, would result in a publicly traded company to be named Graham Packaging Company, Inc., and is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year.