Whirlpool Closes Indiana Plant

Appliance giant Whirlpool Corp. has decided to shut down operations of its Evansville, Indiana manufacturing plant by the middle of 2010 as part of a larger effort by the company to restructure its manufacturing. Unfortunately for Evansville, a total of around 1,100 jobs will be shed as part of the closing of the plant.
 
The factory’s production, which consists primarily of Whirlpool’s most popular freezer refrigerators, will be transferred to a factory in Mexico, while its production of icemakers at the same factory will be moved to an undisclosed location. According to Whirlpool, the company has been looking at ways to consolidate production of its refrigerators, as well as considering a move for the Refrigeration Production Development Center, another Evansville institution with 300 employees.
 
In all, Whirlpool, which had sales of $19 billion in 2008, employs 70,000 people around the world, many of which work in the company’s 67 manufacturing and technology research centers across the globe. According to Whirlpool, production overlap and oversupply have both become problems for the company and a need to streamline has arisen.

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