Need toilet paper? Procter & Gamble plant goes into overdrive during coronavirus crisis

By Kathryne Rubright The Pocono Record
Posted at 9:46 AM

MEHOOPANY, Pa. - The Procter & Gamble factory in Mehoopany, Pennsylvania, has long been a key fixture of the rural community.

Generations of families have worked there. The Wyoming County United Way counts P&G, which opened its plant in 1966, as its biggest financial supporter. While a map shows the facility tucked neatly into a curve of the Susquehanna River, it’s a physically large presence.

And though few people outside Wyoming County know all that, shoppers have cleared shelves of its products across the country in recent weeks.

Bounty paper towels and napkins, Pampers and Luvs diapers and Charmin toilet paper are all made at P&G’s largest U.S. factory, which is also adding face masks to its output.

The plant is located about an hour’s drive south of downtown Binghamton mostly along rural and scenic Route 267. It employs about 2,200 people who are getting temperature checks and being encouraged to practice social distancing as they continue churning out the products that Americans have been stockpiling as the coronavirus spreads. Mehoopany Township was reported in 2017 to be home to only 896 people.

Around the time social media started filling up with photos of barren shelves, “miles upon miles of tractor trailers” could be seen waiting to pick up P&G’s products from Mehoopany, said Kristen Huff, executive director of the Wyoming County United Way.

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