Whirlpool will close plant in Evansville1,100 to lose jobs as refrigerator work heads for MexicoIndiana will lose another industrial icon next year when Whirlpool closes its Evansville refrigerator plant, wiping out 1,100 jobs.
Known a half-century ago as the world refrigerator capital, Evansville will see its last remaining refrigerator plant close next summer when Whirlpool moves production to Mexico.
The Michigan manufacturer announced the closing Friday, saying it also will move assembly of ice makers from Evansville to an undetermined location.
"We had to take a look at which plant we could get the best cost position in, and because top-mount refrigerators are not in the demand that they used to be and they're more of a commodity item, Mexico offers us the best cost platform to continue to produce (them)," Whirlpool spokeswoman Jill Saletta said.
Losing the Whirlpool line will be a shock to Indiana's southwest corner, an area that had weathered the recession with relatively few industrial job losses compared to the state as a whole.
By July, the Evansville area had lost 4,200 factory jobs, or about 13 percent of its manufacturing work force, since the recession began in December 2007.
In contrast, the state has shed 110,000 -- or 20 percent -- of the 545,300 industrial jobs in place when the recession began.
"We're talking about a dramatic impact on the economy and the work force," Evansville Mayor Jonathan Weinzapfel said. "Our job is to try to find ways to absorb these folks into other positions in the economy."
July's jobless rate in Evansville and Vanderburgh County stood at 8.2 percent, compared with 10.6 percent statewide.
Hundreds of offices, shops, stores and plants in Indiana have let go of workers, but Whirlpool's layoff would be one of the largest of the recession.
By closing a plant employing 1,100 people, Whirlpool's would rank as the second-largest shutdown or layoff announced this year in Indiana.
In July, Navistar closed its Indianapolis diesel engine plant, wiping out 1,336 jobs. Other major job losses include 985 temporary layoffs by Caterpillar in Lafayette this week, 978 temporary layoffs by ArcelorMittal at East Chicago last month and 696 temporary layoffs by Cummins in Walesboro in May.
The largest single layoff of this recession was the shutdown of Monaco Coach's recreation vehicle plants in Elkhart and Nappanee, which idled 1,430 people in September, state reports show.
City officials said they hope to keep Whirlpool's refrigeration product development center, but Whirlpool said it has not decided the fate of the center's 300 employees. It expects to in the "near future." Last year, Whirlpool cut 120 jobs at the Evansville plant.
Its closing fits into Whirlpool's bigger plan of reducing excess capacity that it built from 2004 to 2007, said Brian Sozzi, an analyst with Wall Street Strategies.
Refrigerator plants run by Sunbeam, Seeger, Serval and International Harvester in the late 1940s gave Evansville the reputation of being the Refrigerator Capital of the World, noted the Evansville Courier & Press.
Serval was gone and Harvester had left the refrigerator business by the time Whirlpool and Seeger merged in 1955. But by then, Whirlpool was on the way to employing what would be a peak of 10,000 workers in the city.
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