Lawrence Paper Co. laid off eight employees this week, as orders continue to slow for the company’s cardboard boxes and other packaging products.

Affected employees had worked in either the main office or factory at 2801 Lakeview Road.

The economic downturn already had prompted the company to lay off 15 employees Feb. 27, and the latest round of cuts — implemented today and Tuesday — was more of the same, said Justin Hill, company president.

“Business volume continues to be severely down,” said Hill, who had acknowledged two months ago that orders had been down 20 percent compared with a year earlier. “It’s gotten just a little bit worse.”

Before the latest layoffs, Lawrence Paper had 260 employees, of whom 200 were in Lawrence. All eight employees laid off this week had been working in Lawrence, where the company has a 900,000-square-foot production center that typically makes 250,000 boxes each day.

As other companies continue to curtail their own shipping and production operations, Hill said, Lawrence Paper can’t afford to maintain production levels when excess inventory simply would pile up in a warehouse.

“It all depends on the economy,” Hill said. “We’re at the mercy of what the economy does.”