Columbus McKinnon details Salem plant closing
SALEM — Columbus McKinnon Ohio operations announced on Oct. 26 it will be move a portion of assembly operations from Salem to its Wadesboro, N.C., plant.
The move is a part of a larger product consolidation effort in CMCO in order to simplify business and provide better value and overall experience for our customers.
Eighteen union hourly and 11 staff jobs are affected by the transfer of work and of those 12 jobs will be transferred to Wadesboro facility.
The remaining union hourly jobs and staff jobs are being reduced due to the consolidation.
In the last year, the Wadesboro facility has been transformed into the wire rope hoist “manufacturing center of excellence,” the company said, “and we’ve also routed final processing of our European wire rope hoist product line through Wadesboro for American sales.”
With the addition of the product from Ohio, Wadesboro becomes a “customer destination” where they can see the entire global wire rope hoist product line being manufactured for whatever end use they may have.
The company said, “The remaining manufacturing functions at Salem will be moved to our facility in Lisbon where we will continue operations normally to support the wire rope hoist product line as well as the existing chain hoist products produced in Salem and Lisbon.”
Additionally the customer service team currently located in Salem will be moved to another building in Salem. It is a group of 20 professionals who support the whole CMCO business through quoting and other customer service activity.
When the company moved into the former Solar Tech building in 2010 it spent about $2 million in renovations while Salem and the Ohio Mid-Eastern Governments Association (OMEGA) split $150,000 to dredge the nearby Buttermilk Run waterway to prevent flooding.
The Ohio Department of Development also offered job creation tax credits and the company received an extended a five-year rebate of half the 1% city income tax the work force paid.