Rubbermaid to add 200 more jobs in Sandy Springs

Despite the tumult in the credit markets and banks tightening their reins on lending, large corporations with strong fundamentals can still get access to capital, Newell Rubbermaid CEO Mark Ketchum said Wednesday.

Ketchum’s confidence was underscored by the Sandy Springs-based consumer products giant’s announcement it will relocate its baby and parenting subsidiary, which includes the Graco unit and brands in Germany and Japan, to its global headquarters from Exton, Pa., creating up to about 200 jobs by the end of next year.

The company, which itself relocated from Freeport, Ill., in 2003, said most of those jobs would be filled locally. They are in addition to the 200 jobs Newell had already announced it would create in Union City when it opens its 800,000-square-foot Southeastern distribution center. The distribution center will have a full staff of 300, but 100 of those positions will be relocations from Newell’s distribution facility in Columbus.

The job creation and corporate expansion by the $4.85 billion maker of Parker Pens, Calphalon cookware and Goody hair care products comes as Georgia’s unemployment rate rose to 6.3 percent in August, the highest it’s been since 1993.

Gov. Sonny Perdue, who helped land Newell in 2003, said the expansions, which will bring the company’s overall Georgia work force to about 1,000 from its original 200, are proof that metro Atlanta in particular is still the Southeast’s “corner store location from which to do business.”

It also comes amid an economic crisis: The implosion of the U.S. housing market; the federal takeover of several financial institutions such as IndyMac, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; and the end of Wall Street’s storied investment banking houses, including Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

Even with the uncertainty, “credit markets are still fully accessible” to those firms with solid balance sheets, Ketchum said in an interview. He spoke after Newell executives, along with Perdue and other local and state economic development boosters, officially opened the company’s $100 million, 14-story headquarters building on Glenlake Parkway.

Indeed, last week, Newell secured a $400 million credit line through J.P. Morgan Chase Bank and Bank of America, which it said would be used to move short-term debt to medium-term debt. The company reported profit of $92.5 million in the second quarter, and expects global sales growth of between six percent and eight percent.

Still, the current $700 billion bailout plan to save the financial sector, if passed by Congress, would bring some stability to the U.S. economy, ultimately helping consumer-dependent companies like Newell, Ketchum said.

“I think it has to pass and it’s important that it does pass,” Ketchum said. “It would shore up confidence.”

Congressional action would particularly benefit Newell’s tools and hardware and window decor businesses, which are directly linked to the home building sector, Ketchum said.

Ketchum expects a turnaround around as “(the housing) sector becomes more robust.

“A penny-pinching consumer is not good for any of our businesses.”