Neenah Foundry Co. filed a Worker Adjustment Retraining Notification (WARN) covering a total of 131 hourly and salaried employees at its Mercer Forge subsidiary in Pennsylvania. Mercer Forge has been sold to Milwaukee Forge for an undisclosed price, and the layoffs are expected to be permanent, according to reports.
Neenah Foundry is a ferrous foundry group that purchased Mercer Forge more than 20 years ago as part of a diversification strategy. Other Neenah Foundry operations apparently are unaffected.
The sale was completed on August 13. The WARN notice indicates that Milwaukee Forge may offer employment “to as many Mercer Forge employees as it needs,” but the buyer has not confirmed or clarified that detail.
Mercer Forge in Mercer, PA, is a closed-die forging operation that produces alloy steel ("micro-alloy") forgings for heavy-duty and light-duty trucks, agriculture and construction equipment, oil-and-gas drilling and processing, railroad components, mining machinery, and military hardware. sample forgings include differential cases, kingpins, yokes, pinion gears, ball studs, master links, lock sets, and full links.
The smaller plant in Wheatland, PA, is a production machining operation.
Milwaukee Forge, in Milwaukee, WI, also is an impression-die forging operation with a similar range of products and customers. In its announcement of the purchase it stated that the " combination creates an organization even better able to serve customers and compete in the global marketplace."