Ball adding 600 jobs, building new Westminster HQ

BROOMFIELD — Ball Corp. (NYSE: BLL), a Broomfield-based metal-packaging manufacturer with a major aerospace division, is adding 600 new aerospace jobs in the coming year — on top of the 300 new employees added since Jan. 1 —and recently broke ground on a new headquarters in Westminster.

The new four-building headquarters will be located at the existing site of Ball’s Packaging Office Center at 9343 W. 108th Circle. Ball is currently headquartered at 10 Longs Peak Drive in Broomfield.

The Packaging Office Center will be expanded and refreshed as part of the headquarters construction, according to a Ball news release.

The Westminster campus will have 186,000 square feet of office space. In addition to the Packaging Office Center, the campus will house the Ball Technology and Innovation Center and Aerospace Manufacturing Center. Amenities will include cafeteria, auditorium, board room, offices, conference rooms and fitness center.

“As our businesses, particularly aerospace, continue to grow and evolve, we need more office space to accommodate these developments, and allow our employees to better work together to develop innovative solutions that help Ball and our customers be successful over the long term,” Ball CEO John Hayes said in a prepared statement. “We’ve had our North American packaging headquarters, our innovation and technology center and our AMC in Westminster for more than 30 years, and are excited to create a more collaborative campus-feel with the move and construction of our headquarters.”

On Thursday, Ball posted slightly lower earnings in the first quarter of fiscal year 2019 compared with the same period in 2018.

Ball’s first-quarter 2019 comparable net earnings were $167 million, or 49 cents per diluted share, compared with $180 million, or 50 cents per diluted share in 2018, according to the company’s quarterly earnings report.

Ball’s beverage divisions saw mixed results in the quarter. The North and Central American division and the European division posted higher revenues compared with the first quarter of 2018, while the South American division saw slightly slower sales totals.

The company’s aerospace division posted operating earnings of $30 million on sales of $328 million for the first quarter of 2019, compared to $25 million on sales of $264 million during the same period in 2018.

“Year-to-date the company hired more than 300 people into this business with an additional 600 employees required within the next twelve months,” according to a Ball news release. “Due to continued growth, our 2018 facility expansions in Westminster and Boulder have been fully utilized and additional infrastructure growth capital will be deployed in late 2019 and 2020.”

The new employees will be added “will be spread across all aerospace facilities in the U.S., including those in Boulder, Broomfield and Westminster,” Ball’s corporate communications director Renee Robinson said in an email.

“Growth trends in our packaging and aerospace businesses continue to gain momentum. During the quarter, higher than expected global can demand driven by customers’ shifting mix and new product launches to aluminum packaging helped drive stronger revenue growth,” Hayes said. “In North America, higher costs related to surplus U.S. aluminum scrap and higher than anticipated plant start-up costs affected first quarter results. We anticipate that these near-term cost pressures will moderate in the second half when new lines complete learning curves and more favorable contractual terms become effective, as well as in 2020 and beyond.”

This story has been updated to include information about where the new Ball aerospace employees will be added.

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