What's happening at Shop-Vac?

Shop-Vac Corp. is shutting down a manufacturing plant in Union, N.Y., that includes plastics processing, according to local news reports. The company, which makes a well known line of wet/dry utility vacuums, told workers and local officials about the news last week, according to this story from the Binghamton, N.Y., Press & News-Bulletin. The story quotes David Grill, the company's senior VP and chief financial officer, saying that the company decided to close the plant after an internal study that found that operating two manufacturing centers -- the other is at the firm's headquarters in Williamsport, Pa. -- was too expensive. "We've retrenched back to our historical setup where we assemble the vacuums here in Williamsport," he said. Shop-Vac leased the 215,000-square-foot building in Union from National Pipe & Plastics Inc. in Vestal, N.Y. Nina Ying Sun, one of our assistant managing editors at Plastics News, tried to get more information about the Union plant's plastics operations, but Grill declined to answer her questions. We were able to get some dated information from the company's last annual report (filed in 1999). At the time, the company was investing in its plastics operations:

The Company has recently begun to manufacture motors and plastic parts for other consumer product manufacturers. This allows the Company to make profitable use of manufacturing capacity which is not required for its primary business. This business accounted for approximately 2% of the Company's net sales in 1998.

The local news reports note that Shop-Vac will offer jobs to some of the 200 workers currently employed at the Union plant.