More than two hundred years after its opening, the Laperle foundry, in Montérégie, permanently closed its doors, leading to the dismissal of 90 employees.
“Production will cease immediately, but closure will take place gradually, with emphasis on liquidating remaining stocks and meeting regulatory environmental obligations. It is estimated that all activities will cease within a year,” said the company that operated the foundry, McWane Canada, in a press release.
In total, 90 people will lose their jobs because of this closure. Employees were informed of this on October 22 when they came to work.
“It was a shock wave,” underlines the union advisor of the United Steelworkers Union, Yves Rolland. “We knew that the factory was not doing very well in recent months, but we had no indication from the employer of its real intentions.”
The situation was so critical that the plant had been for sale for about a year. Having failed to find a buyer, McWane decided to throw in the towel.
For now, the union has also started looking for potential buyers to relaunch the company. “It’s a bit of catching up. We could have taken steps earlier if we had been aware,” laments Mr. Rolland.
Unfair competition
To justify its decision to close the door of a foundry which has more than 200 years of history, McWane Canada cited the “incessant competition from extraterritorial imports”, and a drop in sales which forced the company to reduce its production forecasts for 2024 by 50%.
“The foundry primarily manufactured road castings, a product segment that has been continually decimated by the staggering increase in unfair competition from extraterritorial imports in the Canadian market,” it was explained.
McWane Canada also owns the Bibby-Ste-Croix foundry, which will continue its usual activities.
For the record
The Laperle foundry was founded in 1800 in Ruisseau, making it one of the oldest companies in Quebec. Initially, the foundry mainly manufactured cast iron plows, then moved to Saint-Ours in the mid-19th century.e century, we can read on the company’s website.
It was not until around 1960 that the company began to specialize in the manufacture of castings for sewers and waterworks.
The company was acquired in 1985 by the Bibby-Ste-Croix group, bought in 1997 by McWane Inc, a company headquartered in Birmingham, Alabama.