The Winthrop-Atkins Company, manufacturers of calendars and specialty paper products for more than 100 years, was purchase by an Illinois firm that abruptly closed the East Main Street facility on Dec. 31.

Anna Nalevanko, the town’s director of economic and community development, said she understands that Paul Atkins, a descendant of the company’s original owners and current operations manager, and several other staff members were kept on to deal with the company’s three-building complex that continues to be owned by the Chilcote Company of Cleveland.

Nalevanko said she believed there were about 40 people employed at the East Main Street complex by year’s end.

Winthrop-Atkins had had more than 100 employees, some of whom had worked there for decades, when the Chilcote Company opened a new $350,000 corporate product development center at the Middleboro plant three years ago.

Nalevanko said the Winthrop-Atkins division was purchased by an Illinois company that closed on the sale Dec. 31 and shut down the business. She said the purchase evidently was aimed at acquiring Winthrop-Atkins’ customers. “It happened very fast,” Nalevanko said.

Read the full story on SouthCoastToday.com. (The New England Business Bulletin, January 26, 2009)