(Ringgold) — A company that makes walk-in vans in Ringgold will lay off 139 workers.
Morgan Olsen announced the move Monday in a letter to Pittsylvania County Board of Supervisors Chairman Darrell Dalton. A company spokesperson says the layoffs will take effect September 27th. The workers were told on Monday.
“At this time the mass layoff is expected to be permanent,” Morgan Olsen Vice-President Niki Reiter said in the letter. “But we hope with business improvement we can implement re-hiring.”
The move comes less than a year after Morgan Olson laid off 435 workers at their factory in the Cane Creek Industrial Park. That move last December came while Morgan Olson trimmed the workforce at their other two factories in Michigan and Tennessee.
The company originally promised 740 jobs as part of a 58 million dollar investment to refurbish the recently-closed IKEA plant. They later hinted that market demand could put them over the one-thousand worker mark. Reports indicate they peaked at 612 workers in October of 2022.
“It is our hope that the impacts of the layoffs on the individual employees and their families can be minimized,” said Reiter.
Morgan Olson got nearly one-point-two million dollars in grants from the Virginia Tobacco Commission. In October-2022, The Port of Virginia awarded Morgan Olson a half-million-dollar grant from their Economic and Infrastructure Development Grant Fund. The grant marked Morgan Olsen passing the five-hundred new full-time jobs threshold in Ringgold.
Based on previous reports, this latest round of layoffs will leave them with fewer than a hundred local workers.