Gildan Activewear Inc is to shut down its manufacturing facility in Hildebran, North Carolina with the loss of 100 jobs. Gildan acquired the site in 2016 with the purchase of the Peds Manufacturing Group facility.
Earlier this year, Gildan cut 65 jobs at the site, which mainly affected the administrative and distribution parts of the business rather than the sock manufacturing operation. This latest move, however, will impact directly on the remaining manufacturing jobs.
Peds is a Montreal-based marketer of high-end socks and legwear products, including ladies no-show liners, socks and sheer, and therapeutic hosiery sold mainly under the Peds and MediPeds brands to the US and Canadian retailers. The company currently generates annual sales of approximately $80 mn supported by sourced production and the company-owned manufacturing and distribution facility. At the time of the acquisition, the Hildebran plant had about 200 employees.
The Peds job cuts are the latest workforce reduction by Gildan. In December 2017 it confirmed plans to close a former Comfort Colors dyeing facility in Massachusetts, cutting 90 jobs, as part of shifting production to its Central American operations.
“The closure of the facility in (New Bedford) basically consolidated all our garment dyeing operations into one single location in the manufacturing hub where we manufacture the actual garments,” spokesman Garry Bell said.
Elsewhere, Gildan has pledged to create more than 700 jobs in North Carolina, including at least 290 in Mocksville, as part of expanding domestic yarn-spinning capacity for new and existing products for its Gildan Yarns division. It also added production at its Salisbury facility.
