Ergon subsidiary closing, ending 50 jobs
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, June 24, 2009
Lingering effects of the national recession were cited for about 50 more job losses in Vicksburg Tuesday, as a subsidiary of one of Warren County’s largest employers was set to close.
Specialty Process Fabricators Inc., a part of Ergon Inc., will close in phases over the next several months, Ergon spokesman Jim Temple said.
“This closure is the result of the current economic climate and the uncertainty of an economic recovery within SpecFab’s business sectors,” Temple said in an e-mailed statement. The company’s decision was made “regretfully,” Temple said.
“Current projects will be completed over the next several months and corresponding positions will be discharged at those times,” Temple said.
Nearly all employees were told at midday Tuesday they were being laid off from their jobs at the 10-acre facility at the Port of Vicksburg, located among a cluster of Ergon’s operations at the port, including its refining operation and its jointly run ethanol plant. An employer of 52 welders, electricians and other specialized personnel for making gas compressors and chemical storage structures, the facility also features North America’s largest planer mills where various oil bases were made for a number of industries, according to its Web site.
Warren County Port Commission executive director Wayne Mansfield said late Tuesday the closure did not come up in his most recent contacts with Ergon officials. SpecFab’s incorporated entity is the listed owner of the site.
“We’ll work with Ergon to locate a tenant there,” Mansfield said. “It’s a very attractive site.”
Mansfield said current improvements to the port center on the access road, totaling about $8 million in long-range upgrades and an in-progress replacement of the bridge at Haining Road and North Washington Street, are signs of the port’s expected vitality.
The Vicksburg WIN Job Center planned to contact employees affected by the announcement today, office manager Terry Hodges said.
“We’re going to arrange a rapid response for those folks,” Hodges said, adding the local Monroe Street office will assist workers with filing unemployment claims and resume writing.
A larger initiative by the Mississippi Department of Employment Security will involve job readiness workshops and “extensive training” programs, Hodges said. Funding is expected to be included in the agency’s allocations from the federal stimulus package.
Unemployment in Warren County stood at 8.8 percent in April, down from 9.3 percent in March but up sharply from the 5.4 percent the state recorded in April 2008. Unemployment in Mississippi stood at 8.6 percent for April, down from March’s 9.4 percent. The seasonally adjusted rate in the state was higher for the month, at 9.1 percent.
Preliminary data from the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics shows 9.6 percent unemployment in Mississippi during May, which could include the state among seven others in the South with a higher rate than the national average of 9.4 percent. Both figures are seasonally adjusted.
The closing was announced just hours after Mississippi Development Authority executive director Gray Swoope spoke at Engineering Expo 2009 at the Vicksburg Convention Center, an event organized by the Vicksburg- Warren County Chamber of Commerce to help promote industries doing business with the Army Corps of Engineers.
Swoope emphasized strides made by the state in economic development since 2004 and touted recent efforts in Tupelo and Starkville to save existing businesses there that had planned to leave, but acknowledged the effects of the recession in terms of Mississippi’s unemployment rate since the middle of 2008. Rates then stood at around 7 percent.
“We’re not immune to the global downturn,” Swoope said, adding later the presence of the Mississippi River is a “God-given asset” in many opportunities for development in Vicksburg and Warren County.
Swoope also stressed regional cooperation as a prime component of luring new industry.
“Companies care about the work force and resources of a region,” Swoope said.
Ergon’s announcement is the fourth closure of a major employer or subsidiary in the past 18 months and the second at the port.
In February, Armstrong World Industries closed its Vicksburg flooring plant while holding onto the property for possible future expansion. It employed 124. Also, Simpson Dura-Vent and Yorozu Automotive Mississippi, both located at Ceres Research and Industrial Interplex, have ceased operations and ended jobs for about 240 at the times their closures were announced.
Layoffs this year beset LeTourneau Technologies and Cooper Lighting. Smaller labor forces have continued there either with new projects or modest expansion.
An application to exempt 58 percent of inventory shipped by the Bunge-Ergon ethanol plant outside Mississippi is before both Vicksburg and Warren County boards. A fee-in-lieu of property tax arrangement at Ergon’s local refinery, agreed to by the county in principle in 2006, did not arrive before a June 1 deadline to be acted on this year, according to the Tax Assessor’s Office.
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Contact Danny Barrett Jr. at dbarrett@vicksburgpost.com