UPDATED: Jindal touts Graphic expansion by Michael DeVault - posted Wednesday, June 27th, 2012 @ 9:48 am  E-mail Story |  Print Story  A West Monroe facility will soon be the home to more than 40 new jobs courtesy of a popular children's beverage, Gov. Bobby Jindal announced Wednesday. Graphic Packaging International (GPI) will produce paper packaging for the Capri Sun line of Kraft Foods products. Graphic Packaging's Exchange Street facility will handle the work. "Today's announcement is not only great news for West Monroe but for all of north Louisiana, as Graphic Packaging's investment helps secure more than 1,400 jobs at the company's facilities (throughout Louisiana)," said Jindal, who paid a visit to GPI's Exchange Street facility to make the announcement. All told, Graphic Packaging employs some 1,460 people at four facilities scattered throughout the state. Jindal said his administration worked with GPI officials since 2008 to help secure the company's workforce in Louisiana. Wednesday's announcement was part of the fruits of those efforts, according to Jindal. "They ultimately decided to expand here because of our state's strong business climate and because of the incredible workforce located here in West Monroe and across north Louisiana," Jindal said. To land the Capri Sun contract, GPI invested more than $8.6 million to expand its consumer carton facility. Locating the Capri Sun operations in West Monroe was a good fit, according to Phil Geminder, GPI Vice President of Global Business Systems. "One of the real values of this project is the integration with our paper mill," Geminder said. Multi-ton rolls of card stock are delivered to the Exchange Street facility fresh from the West Monroe paper mill. That paper is fed into one end of the building and leaves the other end "as a finished product," Geminder said. That level of integration is just one of the ways GPI convinced Kraft Foods to send its business to West Monroe, according to company officials. Overall, the GPI process will save more than 16 tons of paper each year. Also, GPI processes will reduce carbon dioxide emissions by more than 32 percent while reducing power consumption by almost 38 percent. Jindal pointed out that producing the cartons in West Monroe would conserve enough energy to power some 6,600 homes a year. Jindal said Louisiana Economic Development Corp. worked closely with GPI to craft an incentives package that made sure the jobs came to Louisiana. To that end, Jindal said GPI would utilize the state's Modernization Tax Credit, a 5-percent credit paid over five years and valued at more than $430,000. Additionally, GPI will benefit from customized workforce solutions through the LED FastStart program, which assists companies in developing qualified employees.