Future uncertain for furloughed workers of Indalex Alumimum

One of the company’s three extrusion presses is broken and won’t be fixed.

By DON SHILLING

VINDICATOR BUSINESS EDITOR

GIRARD — About 45 workers laid off from Indalex Aluminum Solutions aren’t expected to return to work any time soon.

The workers were furloughed last month when part of the foundation of an extrusion press cracked.

The press can’t operate and the damage isn’t easy to repair, said Scott Langdon, a spokesman for Indalex.

“You can’t patch it. You have to take the press apart and rebuild it,” he said.

Indalex has decided not to rebuild the press, however, because demand for the plant’s products has been down, he said.

The Girard plant is part of the company’s residential building and construction group. Orders for the group’s extrusion products are down because the home-building industry is in a slump, Langdon said.

“It doesn’t make much business sense to repair the press when you have capacity available,” he said.

Indalex officials expect the slump to continue for some time, so there are no immediate plans to restart the press, he said.

The plant has two other presses and still has about 250 people working.

The other plants in the group are in Toronto, Montreal and Gainesville, Ga.

Indalex, which is based in Chicago, reported last month that its second-quarter sales were down in part because of the weak construction market. Sales for the quarter were $304.8 million, compared with $353 million in the same quarter last year.

In this year’s second quarter, the company had a loss from operations of $500,000. It posted earnings of $30.1 million for the quarter because of the sale of its Asian operations.

Indalex also operates a plant in Niles, which employs 80. Langdon said it hasn’t been affected by the housing slowdown because it produces extrusions primarily for the transportation industry.

shilling@vindy.com