DeFehr Furniture says it is closing a Winnipeg production plant, leaving hundreds of employees looking for work.
in a notice posted on your website this week, DeFehr said it will end furniture manufacturing at its facility at 125 Furniture Park this summer.
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The move will affect 224 employees, the company said.
“The decision to cease operations was the result of severe supply chain disruptions and raw material sourcing challenges over the last two years, combined with balancing the pace of price increases being passed on to customers,” reads the notice, dated Wednesday.
The company’s president and CEO, Andrew DeFehr, told 680 CJOB that the supply chain issues now leading to costly delays for the business follow months of tough times during the pandemic.
“At some point you run out of capital in the business,” he said.
“You try to run at a loss, hoping that eventually you can break even and get to greener pastures, (but) we were looking at the medium (and) long term and thought ‘I don’t think we can do that.’ “
DeFehr said the facility will officially close on August 11.
“We wanted to make sure that we could meet all of our employee obligations … and meet all of our obligations to customers who ordered our product,” he explained.
Affected employees will be offered support programs, DeFehr said, including a job fair hosted by the company.
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“To the extent that we can help employees find other employment that is as good or better, that will be one of our main goals and focus for the next three and a half months,” he said.
“We are sad to have to make this decision, it was very difficult.”
–With archives of Richard Cloutier
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