Havco announces layoff of 30 employees

Thirty full-time employees have been laid off and some temporary positions have been eliminated from the Havco facility in Scott City, effective last Friday, Havco president and CEO Bruce Bader said Monday.

Havco manufactures hardwood flooring for trailers, truck bodies and containers, including intermodal domestic containers. The overseas demand for the flooring Havco provides for intermodal domestic containers weakened, causing the layoffs, he said.

Intermodal domestic containers look like trailers and are transported by rail or by truck, Bader said, sometimes stacked two high. Havco ships flooring needed for the domestic containers to China, where the containers are manufactured, and the finished product is sent to North America, he said. Companies in the United States use intermodal domestic containers to ship goods across the country. If traveling by rail, the domestic containers are taken off the railcar, put on a chassis and pulled by truck to their final destination.

Bader said the lack of need for intermodal domestic containers in North America is related to the "general economic condition." U.S. companies buy freight shipments in anticipation for how they think their product will sell, he said.

"Companies that buy these make projections on how business will be six months from now, not today," Bader said.

Julia Wise, assistant media manager for the Association of American Railroads, said in an email to the Southeast Missourian that intermodal rail traffic has been slowly but steadily increasing.

"The latest monthly data for June 2013 saw rail intermodal setting a new record for average weekly volume, and up overall for the 43rd consecutive month," she said. "Intermodal traffic in June totaled 1,009,387 containers and trailers, up 1.3 percent [13,393 units] compared with June 2012. The weekly average of 252,347 units for June was the highest weekly intermodal average for any month in history."

Havco's layoff announcement was made after recent news of the loss of about 500 total jobs in the area after Sabreliner Corp. in Perryville, Mo., Integrity Solution Services in Cape Girardeau and the PolyOne plant at 4753 Nash Road in Cape Girardeau announced layoffs and closures.

In Cape Girardeau County in June, the latest month for which county numbers are available, the unemployment rate was 6.5 percent, the highest it has been since July 2012 when the unemployment rate was 6.9 percent, according to data from the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations.

Bader said the layoffs are a "relatively minor labor adjustment for us," and the facility does not anticipate any more will be necessary. He said there is a possibility laid-off employees could be hired back.

"It depends on if the business picks back up," Bader said. "I would not expect it to happen before probably next spring."

adowning@semissourian.com

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