Highland Heights, KY—General Cable Corp. announced Oct. 28 that it is closing its manufacturing facility in Taunton, MA. This 131,000 square-ft plant employs 77 people, and produces bare copper strand and PVC jacketing compounds.
Highland Heights, KY— General Cable Corp. announced Oct. 28 that it is closing its manufacturing facility in Taunton, MA. This 131,000 square-ft plant employs 77 people, and produces bare copper strand and PVC jacketing compounds. It supplies these products to General Cable’s other manufacturing facilities, which produce a variety of wire and cable products, primarily in the company’s Industrial & Specialty segment.
The company adds that it will incur an approximately $7 million charge in 2003’s fourth quarter related to closing the plant, and estimates about $4 million of this charge will be in cash.
General Cable also announced that it has started feasibility studies at its manufacturing facilities in South Hadley, MA, and Marion, IN. The studies will examine whether the company should continue operations at these locations, or whether their product lines should be moved to other company facilities, or outsourced to a wire conductor fabricator from the South Hadley facility.
ese facilities could reach $20 million, with cash costs amounting to about a third of that total amount.
‘The unprecedented decline in North American industrial activity over the last several years has resulted in a significant reduction in the production loads in our industrial cable plants. This decline in production volume has had a negative impact on the Taunton plant’s competitive cost position and has necessitated this action,’ says Gregory Kenny, General Cable’s president and CEO. ‘The Taunton plant’s closure will reduce our overall fixed costs as we outsource the products the plant makes at a lower cost than we can manufacture them ourselves.
‘The decision to close the facility was based strictly on economies of scale and our need to be the low-cost producer in a highly competitive industrial cable market. Our associates in Taunton have worked hard to improve manufacturing efficiencies and reduce costs over the past several years and I would like to thank them for their efforts and dedication to General Cable during these difficult times.’
Control Engineering Daily News Desk
Jim Montague, news editor
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