NC automotive parts plant to shut down, leaving large gap in rural Roxboro
After three decades, a manufacturing mainstay outside the small North Carolina city of Roxboro will close by the end of the year, affecting at least 247 workers in the rural community north of Durham and Orange counties.
GKN Driveline opened its automotive technology plant in January 1994, around the unincorporated town of Timberlake. Following a pair of expansions, GKN had become the largest private employer in Person County. Its loss will be profoundly felt, said Gordon Powell, chair of the Person County Commissioners, who called the company “a very integral and important corporate citizen.”
“(Their workers) work here. They live here. They own homes here,” he said in a phone interview. “They educate their children here. Attended their churches, and that list can go on and on.”
On March 8, GKN informed the North Carolina Department of Commerce of the impending plant closure in a WARN notice. Under federal law, employers must file such Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification notices to the state when an entire facility closes and affects at least 50 employees.
GKN said that layoffs will begin in May and are likely to finish by the end of November. In the WARN letter, GKN human resources manager Barbara Waldron noted some current Roxboro workers will be offered positions at the company’s facility in Alamance County.
“We are reorganizing our manufacturing operations with respect to the products made in this facility,” she wrote to the state. Impacted positions include manufacturing engineers, quality engineers, operations leaders and supply chain managers.
Bracing for impact of layoffs
Based in the United Kingdom, the parent company GKN Automotive previously made components for the vehicle and aerospace industries. But in 2018, the London-based aerospace manufacturer Melrose Industries acquired GKN in a hostile takeover.
In 2022, GKN Driveline North America also shuttered a plant in the Lee County city of Sanford, WARN records show.
Melrose is known for buying engineering companies and then divesting portions of them which has led critics to label the firm as an “asset stripper.” Last year, Melrose spun off its automotive division and began to focus solely on aerospace.
In Person County, the goal now is to “take the lemons we have to make lemonade,” Powell said, adding “the first objective is to secure jobs for (laid off workers) locally, if possible, and get them in line for any benefits from the state.”
The county seat of Roxboro is less than 15 miles from the Virginia border and sits right above Orange and Durham counties on a map. The GKN plant in Timberlake is even closer to the Triangle, and Powell said that area has benefited in recent years as people relocated from the more populous areas to the south.
“We are working very diligently to attract some other industry here and this (closure), who knows, may enhance that search,” he said. “And we’re going to be positive about it. That’s who we are.”
