|
|
||
|
FAMILIAR FACES REOPEN PLANT Tru Tech Doors starts production soon at revitalized factory in Spotsylvania Date published: 7/9/2009
By KELLY HANNON Christine Minter's plans for the future crumbled last October. As a corporate official read from a PowerPoint presentation, Minter learned that her employer, Therma-Tru, was closing the Spotsylvania factory where she'd been working to design and assemble doors for nine years. Starting in the spring, she would be unemployed, along with 200 of her co-workers. Minter was stunned, and a little blindsided. The factory had been busy, she said. "I didn't know what to do," Minter said. But Minter, 42, of Spotsylvania was back on the factory floor yesterday, giving tours for the grand opening of Tru Tech Doors USA. Tru Tech, a Canadian doormaker, decided to buy all of Therma-Tru's equipment at the Mine Road facility. The company's owner, John Careri, was so impressed by the work habits of the employees he observed during a site visit that he went a step further and rehired 40 of Therma-Tru's employees and decided to make Spotsylvania the base for his first U.S. operation. He hopes to hire more workers back as production increases. "I would prefer to employ people with something to prove, and they definitely have something to prove, as opposed to trying to start with new employees and new staff," Careri said yesterday, just before a celebratory lunch for staff and guests. Production could start as soon as Monday. Minter is grateful she was out of work for only five weeks. Some of her former co-workers are having trouble making home and car payments, she said. "I'm excited. I am ready just to do my best. I think we all are. We want to show Tru Tech what we can do, that they won't be sorry they invested in us," Minter said. Launched in 1998, Tru Tech produces more than 250,000 residential and industrial door products a year at three facilities in the Toronto area, and the doors are sold throughout Canada. As Therma-Tru was wrapping up operations in Spotsylvania, Careri was searching for a location to start a U.S. manufacturing center that could ship to customers along the East Coast. Tru Tech staff visited the plant a few days before it closed to evaluate Therma-Tru's equipment. The staff called Careri and urged him to fly to Virginia and meet the employees, too.
1. Be respectful. No personal attacks.
|
|
|||||||||
