Nashua Corp. slashes 28 jobs

Nashua Corp. has cut 28 jobs nationwide, including a handful in Nashua, to offset a decline in sales and increasing fuel, materials and distribution costs.

“We’re impacted by the economy, as is everybody else,” John Patenaude, chief financial officer, said. “You have to look at all the factors and try to sustain a profit.”

Nashua Corp. makes specialty paper and labels. Some of the company’s most recognizable products include movie theater tickets, receipt paper and deli labels.

“If you go to a deli and you get a pound of meat, the type of label that comes off the scale (is made by Nashua Corp.),” Patenaude said.

The company also makes radio frequency identity labels – a technology that is replacing product bar coding. Using Nashua Corp’s labels, a store employee can locate an item – on the floor or in the back room – using radio waves, without having to physically scan it, he said.

Nashua Corp. has about 750 employees at six less than 4 percent of the work force.

The bulk of the cuts came from the closing of a distribution center in New Jersey, Patenaude said.

The company doled out about $600,000 in severance pay but expects to save $1.6 million a year from the cuts, according to a financial statement filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

However, it also is budgeting for upcoming expenses of at least $1.1 million for its participation in a hazardous waste superfund site outside of New Hampshire.

Nashua Corp. saw a big drop in profits in the second quarter of 2008 to $300,000. In the same April through July period last year, the company made $1.3 million.

For the first half of 2008, the company operated at a loss of $53,000 – a huge drop from the $1.9 million in profits recorded in the first six months of 2007.