Clarcor Air Filtration Products closes in Davenport
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By Doug Schorpp | Saturday, April 19, 2008 |
Clarcor Air Filtration Products Inc., 4010 Kimmel Drive, has closed, putting 43 people out of work. Clarcor is the former Purolator Products Inc., Davenport. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)
Clarcor Air Filtration Products Inc., the former Purolator Products Inc., Davenport, has closed, putting 43 people out of work.
Dave Lindsay, vice president and chief administrative officer for Clarcor, the corporate entity that owns the Davenport facility at 4010 Kimmel Drive, said employees learned of the decision late last week and the plant immediately was closed to all manufacturing purposes. The plant manufactures and distributes various air filters.
“A few people have been offered jobs elsewhere, and there is a severance package,” Lindsay said of the Davenport facility, the only one of the Franklin, Tenn., corporation’s 20-plus factories to close under the current situation.
“It is so seldom we had to shut down facilities. This is new to us,” he said. “We are a very team-oriented company. We will provide severance for people, outplacement personnel, who will be there all (this) week, meeting one-on-one with employees.”
Lindsay said Clarcor purchased the Davenport facility in 1999. Two years ago, he said, the company announced the filtration group would undergo some restructuring.
He said there are two main reasons for the closure. All the plants make various portions of the products but some do not make all the products the company manufactures. That means that in some cases, products have to be shipped across the nation because the nearest Clarcor facility may not manufacture the exact product a particular company needs. The second main reason is the high cost of shipping caused by the rising costs of fuel, he said.
“Our shipping patterns didn’t make sense,” Lindsay said. “The plants that remain need to make all of our products, because many of those plants are located closer to our customers. We looked at Davenport to see if we could manufacture all of our products there.” But it was deemed to not be feasible.
Lindsay said a letter explaining the closure was sent Thursday to Davenport Mayor Bill Gluba and DavenportOne President and CEO Tara Barney, among others.
Lindsay about six employees will stay on to about May 30 to fulfill orders already placed and to handle maintenance concerns.
“All affected employees are being offered closing benefits, the option of continuing their health insurance benefits and outplacement services as part of the company’s efforts to minimize the impact of the closing,” Kevin Bush, senior vice president operations for Clarcor, said in the e-mail sent to city officials.
Lindsay said Purolator acquired the building in the mid-1980s that had served as a Montgomery Ward distribution center. After the purchase, Ward and Purolator split space for some time when Purolator used the building only as a distribution facility for its products. Later, it took over the entire building and began manufacturing the air filtration products, he said.
Doug Schorpp can be contacted at (563) 383-2292 or dschorpp@qctimes.com. Comment on this story at qctimes.com.
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