Northland Motor plant will close
Northland Motor Technologies, a Scott Fetzer company, is closing its manufacturing facility at 968 Bradley St.
The city will lose all 62 jobs when the plant shuts its doors Dec. 8, but some employees will be offered a chance to transfer to Tennessee, according to a news release from the company.
Northland produces more than 10 different models of brushless direct current and universal motors, as well as motor controllers, blowers and other air-movement devices, universal and brushless pumps and controls.
Watertown has served as the company's headquarters, with research and development as well as accounting and administrative staff here. The plant's operations are being moved to another Scott Fetzer Electrical Group plant in Tennessee, the company's press release said.
Neither a call to J. Alan Veres, vice president of operation of the group, nor an e-mail to Timothy R. Galligos, general manager of the plant, was returned.
The state Department of Labor and employees were notified Wednesday. The employees are not unionized.
Cheryl A. Mayforth, director of the Jefferson-Lewis Workforce Investment Board, said the Labor Department has a rapid response team that will meet with employees to discuss available programs, including health care and job-search resources.
"We will talk with them about unemployment and training opportunities," she said.
An electric motor plant has been at 968 Bradley St. since 1959, when American-Lincoln Corp. built the plant, first known as American Process Corp. An addition was completed in 1966. In 1968, Scott Fetzer Co. bought the plant, which became the Northland Electric Motors division. Berkshire Hathaway Corp., owned by Warren Buffett, bought Scott Fetzer in 1986.
In 1993, a field assembly line from the Watertown plant was moved to Juarez, Mexico. In July 2003, the company moved idled equipment from one of the four production lines in Watertown to the Juarez plant. Last year, the company hired back about 25 to 30 assemblers in Watertown after the Juarez plant was destroyed by a fire May 3, 2008.
