TTI Floor Care to close main Hoover facilities in Ohio

TTI Floor Care North America (TTI) on April 3 announced that a decision concerning its Hoover facilities in Stark County, Ohio. The company will completely close the main Hoover campus and manufacturing operations in North Canton, a process that will occur gradually and be done by early fall 2007. The distribution center in Jackson Township and the bag assembly plant in downtown Canton are remaining open.

Chris Gurreri, president of TTI Floor Care, said, "Speculation about the future of Hoover's Stark County facilities has held a cloud of doubt over this region for many years. The people here deserve to have such speculation ended now. When TTI bought Hoover at the end of January, we promised to do a comprehensive assessment of its facilities. We also promised to avoid dragging out the process and to communicate our decisions promptly.

"This is hard news to hear and to deliver. We know how difficult this is for the Hoover people and the community because of the history, heritage and importance of this facility in the past. Although TTI Floor Care has only owned Hoover for 60 days, we are going to go to great lengths to help ease the transition and minimize the impact on employees and the community."

Key points of this decision include:

• The manufacturing plant in North Canton will gradually but completely wind down operations. The main campus, including the manufacturing plant, is expected to be closed no later than September 2007.

• Manufacturing operations will be consolidated into Hoover's existing Southwest Operations which has injection molding operations in El Paso, Texas, and assembly operations in Juarez, Mexico.

• The Hoover Distribution Center in Jackson Township is remaining open for service and distribution functions. The Hoover bag plant in downtown Canton is remaining open for light assembly functions.

• Although most manufacturing jobs in Stark County are being eliminated, TTI intends to honor through June 2008 the contract covering wages and benefits for the approximately 800 members of International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Union Local 1985.

• TTI intends to retain approximately 150 to 175 jobs in Stark County, including distribution, light assembly service and administrative positions. The majority of those positions will likely be hourly workers and the balance will be salaried management positions.

• At present, there are approximately 180 salaried positions in Hoover operations in Stark County. As previously announced, TTI is combining non-manufacturing operations with existing Dirt Devil operations in Glenwillow, Ohio: functions such as engineering, marketing, research and development, human resources, and IT. Of the 100 such jobs in Stark County, TTI has made 65 offers of continued employment in the Glenwillow headquarters; many of these have been accepted.

• Of the remaining 80 salaried positions connected to manufacturing operations, about 20 supervisory jobs are remaining with the retained assembly and distribution operations in Stark County.

• TTI will provide severance packages, including benefits, for those salaried and administrative employees who were not made offers of continued employment or who have declined such offers.

• TTI will build a new Global Research and Development Center in Glenwillow, which will include the addition of at least 110 new jobs over the next three years. Active campus and other recruiting is under way for those positions.

• The unused Hoover real estate and related assets at the main campus in North Canton will be sold. The former Hoover headquarters building has stood empty since late 2004 when then-owner Maytag consolidated nearly all corporate functions into its headquarters in Newton, Iowa.

Gurreri noted that even if North Canton costs were dramatically lower, the company has twice as much manufacturing capacity as is needed, with more than 900,000 square feet of unused space and millions of dollars worth of dormant machinery in North Canton.

"There is no way this plant can be kept open. There is just far too much capacity throughout the company. If Ohio-based TTI Floor Care is to become the global leader in floor care and we are to develop and build the innovative products that enable us to do that, we must resolve this immense issue of overcapacity that is dragging on the company," he said.

"Our careful analysis has made it extremely clear that no other decision was possible. With Hoover, TTI Floor Care has twice as much manufacturing capacity as needed, and when combined with the high cost of manufacturing in North Canton, an extremely competitive industry and overall declining Hoover sales, this was the only conclusion possible."