Middletown business breaks ground on expansion

MIDDLETOWN, Ohio - Akers Packaging Service Inc. broke ground on a $5.5 million expansion that is expected to add roughly 27 jobs.

The city approved an incentive package last month that includes a 50 percent Job Creation Incentive Grant that will be the same as the income tax collected on the new jobs.

Akers CEO, Jim Akers, declined a formal interview because he said many of the details on the expansion have yet to be finalized.

Akers would only say, "We will have the project more definitively developed by year end 2012."

9 News spoke to local businesses like Field's Auto Service about the expansion. Darrin Fields and his father Glenn are very excited.

"Over the years we've worked on quite a few people's cars from Akers Packaging and we've done very well from it," said Darrin Fields.

Fields estimates that 20 percent of the family's business has been provided by Aker's employees which total 150 at the Middletown location.

Akers has locations around Ohio and in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan as well as Kentucky.

The 27 jobs are expected to bring more than $1 million in salaries.  Many of the employees will be working on new equipment purchased for the expansion. That new equipment is priced at roughly $9.5 million.

The overall size of the expansion is set at roughly 130,000 square feet.

"Anything expanding a round here would help tremendously for anybody's business.  The more people we can draw back into Middletown hopefully things will start looking up," said Fields.