CENTRAL LAKE -- Second Chance Armor Inc.'s plant, which withstood bankruptcy to regain its status as a major employer in this Antrim County village, will close its doors, another loss to the local manufacturing sector.
Representatives of Safariland Inc., the parent company of Second Chance, said employees and management at the Antrim County manufacturing plant were informed of the closure plans Wednesday. The work will be shifted to Safariland's operations in Jacksonville, Fla., and 88 jobs will be eliminated in Central Lake.
"I'm sorry to hear the news," village President Larry Eckhardt said. "It's certainly going to hurt the local economy, both with them closing down and if some of those people up and move away."
Operations will be phased out over the next few months and likely will wind down by late June, company spokesman Michael Munz said. Some workers will be offered positions in Florida, Munz said, but wouldn't identify a specific number.
"A fair amount of employees expressed interest in that option," Munz said. "What we're trying to do is balance the needs of our company with the needs of our people who are an important part of who and what we are."
The company in 2006 received a state tax credit worth $766,000 to add 100 jobs at the plant, plus a connection to village water and sewer service paid for with a state grant. Central Lake Township also approved a tax abatement for the plant's planned expansion, but township assessor Jim Keller said the addition never materialized.
"Obviously, we did what we could to try to keep them here," Eckhardt said.
Bridget Beckman, a spokeswoman for the Michigan Economic Development Corp., said the company also never followed through on the state tax credit approval.
"Nothing was ever applied for ... so nothing was ever transferred on that request," she said.
Since its revival in 2006, the company expanded its work force to more than 100 employees, Eckhardt said.
But the company cut around 50 subcontractor positions and about 15 plant workers last fall.
"That's what's going on nationwide," Eckhardt said. "We've just seen it in this state a little longer than everybody else."
Second Chance dates to the 1970s in Central Lake, and was founded by local resident Richard Davis. It once was among country's leading producers of soft, concealable body armor for police officers.
But operations started to unravel when it was sued by several states and the U.S. Justice Department over allegations that the equipment prematurely lost its bullet resistance with age, a problem the company blamed on a product supplier. Second Chance filed for bankruptcy protection in 2004 and was purchased a year later by Armor Holdings Inc. for $45 million.
Armor Holdings was acquired by the British giant BAE Systems Plc in 2007 for $4.1 billion, and became known as Safariland in January. In October, the company paid $30 million to settle the Justice Department's suit.
BAE also announced plans last fall to close its plant and warehouse facilities in Geneva, Ala., where around 100 jobs from the Second Chance plant were shifted four years ago. The closure of that operation idled almost 200 workers.
BAE Systems is a worldwide defense and aerospace contractor based in the United Kingdom, with around 105,000 employees and sales that totaled more than $34 billion in 2008. But it's been unable to escape the widening global recession, as its stock traded on London's FTSE 100 exchange has lost about 30 percent of its value in the past year. BAE's U.S. subsidiary is based in Rockville, Md.
Another arm of the company, BAE Systems Controls Inc., said this week it would eliminate 450 jobs at a plant in Irving, Texas. Munz said those cuts were unrelated to the closure in Central Lake.
