Layoffs. Restructuring. Staff reductions.

Whichever way you cut it, these are not the words that employees or business owners care to hear. Unfortunately, these utterances were heard far too often this past year in Muskoka in the halls of Dura Automotive, Algonquin Automotive and Tembec.

However, it was the news that the plant known as Hidden Hitch would be closed by the end of December that sent shockwaves throughout the business community. Because of this, the plant’s closure and the loss of 163 jobs is the Huntsville Forester business story of the year.

TriMas Corporation, the parent company for Cequent, announced Oct. 4 that it would shut down the Huntsville plant by the end of December. The plant, which manufactures automotive aftermarket trailer hitches, will have its operations amalgamated into the company’s Indiana plant.

Algonquin Automotive first owned the company until 2001, when Algonquin sold Hidden Hitch to the HammerBlow Corporation. Two years later, HammerBlow, including Hidden Hitch, was sold to Cequent, a subsidiary of the TriMas Corporation based out of Plymouth, Michigan, for $142 million.

Neither TriMas not Cequent officials have stated what their intentions are for the plant or any specifics regarding the plant closure.

John Finley, the municipality’s economic development and grants officer, said the shutdown of the former Hidden Hitch plant and the layoff of 163 employees could mean as much as $7.5 million taken out of the town’s economy. Finley said more than $5.4 million of the figure is in wages to the soon-to-be-laid-off workers.

He said that he is basing his figures on a Business Retention and Expansion survey update he does periodically with local companies.  

“The combined wages and municipal taxation in the community, the economic value, is $7.5 million. That is just for the plant. This does not include spinoffs, such as having Muskoka Transport coming in each day to haul products away. This is just direct benefit to the Huntsville economy.”

Mayor Claude Doughty met with three company officials the day of the announcement. He said that the officials told him that the rising Canadian dollar and off-shore competition were two of the reasons behind the move.

Doughty said that the company also considered the Huntsville plant a ‘low-tech operation,’ and that the 360,000-square-foot facility in Indiana is very high-tech.

As for the Huntsville plant, Doughty said that the officials told him they plan to liquidate the asset. “I encouraged them to get back to us as quickly as they can with what it might be worth to them to get it off their books. Obviously they’re going to maintain it and pay their property taxes and the like, no question about that.”

He told council that Finley has been in touch with FedNor, the Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities, Ministry of Economic Development and Trade, Ministry of Municipal Affairs, Service Canada and the Huntsville employment resource centre. “The Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities rep met with Cequent and John (last Tuesday) and she phoned us right away. The ministry and Cequent are in the process of signing an agreement for an action centre to be established in Huntsville to deal with the trade fair.”

Doughty said that Finley has contacted the real estate agent who put together the Dura deal in Bracebridge, adding it is his understanding from those discussions that there have been several expressions of interest in a smaller space.

“The Dura plant is bigger.  I think this one’s 56,000 square feet and so in part of the search for someone to buy the Dura plant a number of people said, ‘We don’t need something that big.’ So the opportunity there is to go back and say, ‘Okay, well how about 56,000 square feet?’”

Doughty said that the company assured him that the employees are receiving very generous severance packages.

“So obviously this is a hit for our manufacturing segment, no question. Bracebridge has lost in the neighbourhood of 400 jobs in the last year and a bit. A busy time, a challenge for the community for sure and obviously part of the good news is the fact that those people aren’t being thrown out of there without any package.”