(WACO, Texas) – Texas State Technical College’s Workforce Training and Continuing Education department is preparing newly hired manufacturing technicians to work at a company now under construction in Waco.
Georgia-based Graphic Packaging International (GPI) is building a 640,000-square-foot production and warehouse facility on Gateway Boulevard in Texas Central Park, an industrial park in Waco. The company specializes in recycled paperboard manufacturing and is scheduled to be operational in late 2025 or early 2026.
TSTC’s workforce training staff began working with company employees earlier this fall on the Waco campus, with additional training scheduled for early 2025 at The WorkSITE (Skills, Innovation, Training and Education) on Wycon Drive in Waco. The workforce training department will eventually work with five cohorts of company employees taking 80-hours of training for two weeks each. Seventy workers have been trained so far.
“The objective is to provide the manufacturing technicians with the key knowledge and skills necessary to prepare them for their roles at the plant,” said Adam Barber, senior manager of TSTC’s Workforce Training and Continuing Education department at the Waco campus.
Clayton Christensen, a TSTC workforce training instructor, said the workers are learning a curriculum developed from the college’s Industrial Systems and Instrumentation Technology programs. He said it took more than two months to create the GPI curriculum.
Some of the topics that the company employees have been learning about include AC/DC circuits, electronics, fluid power, lubrication, motor alignments, steam generation, and troubleshooting.
Kanyia Ellis, of Belton, is studying computer science at an area two-year college. She said her new job offers her something different than what she has been used to and she has enjoyed learning about automation during her training.
“I like the company really caring about the employees knowing what they are doing,” she said.
Taylor Cox, a TSTC Cybersecurity student from Waco, was recently hired at GPI and said the information that he has been learning during training has been abundant. He said his cybersecurity knowledge is useful when instructors talk about how networking fits into the production process.
For more information on Graphic Packaging International, go to graphicpkg.com.
For more information on TSTC, go to tstc.edu.
