Montreal – Forest products company Tembec is exiting the hardwood flooring business as it shutters a 108-year operation in Huntsville, Ont., and sellsanother facility in Toronto to a private company for $13 million. The Montreal-based company said 63 workers, including 52 unionized employees, will be affected when the Huntsville business, which opened in 1903, ceases operations in January.
The Toronto plant, along with its Muskoka and Vintage flooring brands, will be sold within the next few weeks. It employs 79 workers, including 58 unionized employees. Opened in 1989, Vintage Flooring relocated its manufacturing via an acquisition to its current 6,300-square-metre facility in western Toronto.
Tembec said it will record a one-time charge of $2 million in its December quarterly results. “The sale of the hardwood flooring division is consistent with our strategy to focus on the company’s core businesses,” stated president and CEO James Lopez.
The two facilities generated $48 million of sales, $1.9 million of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization and $1.6 million of operating earnings. Tembec’s hardwood sawmill operations in Huntsville are unaffected by the transaction.
Tembec is an integrated forest products company, with operations in North America and France. It has some 4,300 employees, and operates more than 30 market pulp, paper and wood product manufacturing units. It also produces silvichemicals from by-products of its pulping process and specialty chemicals.
Tembec markets its products worldwide and has sales offices in Canada, the United States, China, Korea and Japan.