Dive Brief:
- Minnesota-based Apogee Enterprises will lay off 250 employees company-wide and shuttering its leased facility in Walker, Michigan, as well as some administrative offices, according to a press release last month.
- Production at the Walker factory will be transferred to Apogee’s facilities in Wausau, Wisconsin, and Monett, Missouri, an Apogee spokesperson told Manufacturing Dive in a Feb. 2 email.
- The job cuts are part of the industrial building material maker’s Project Fortify, which includes cutting costs in its architectural framing systems segment.
Dive Insight:
The Apogee spokesperson said the company started notifying some employees of the layoffs last week and expects all cuts to be completed by November.
Part of Project Fortify, which Apogee announced Jan. 30, is consolidating its architectural framing systems unit into a single operating entity, eliminating certain lower-margin product and service offerings, the press release stated.
The latest layoff plan is expected to save $12 million to $14 million annually over the next several years, according to the press release.
The restructuring is intended to focus on higher growth and improve flexibility, especially as higher interest rates, tighter lending standards and increased costs continue to pressure the commercial construction sector, Apogee executives said in its latest earnings call.
Higher interest rates, tighter lending standards and increased costs have put pressure on the commercial construction industry recently, Apogee executives said in its latest earnings call.
“Looking ahead to calendar '24, most industry forecasts call for further deceleration in [non-residential] construction,” Apogee CEO Ty Silberhorn said in the December call. “We have seen that slowing show up in our short-cycle Framing business this quarter and expect some pressure in parts of that business as we go into fiscal '25.”
Apogee has been reducing its headcount for several years. In August 2021, Apogee laid off 400 workers across two facility closures in Georgia and Texas, according to the Star Tribune.
The building materials maker has manufacturing sites in Michigan, Illinois, Missouri, Minnesota, Texas, Maryland, Wisconsin, and abroad, in Brazil and Ontario, Canada.
