Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Ask The Gunwriters Remington closes plants

"Earlier today we announced the consolidation of multiple company plants into our Huntsville, Alabama facility. This was a strategic business decision to concentrate our resources into fewer locations and improve manufacturing efficiency and quality. We are working hard to retain as many from the affected facilities as possible."

The companies being relocated and their current locations are:
Advanced Armament Corp, Lawrenceville, Georgia; Montana Rifleman, Kalispell, Montana; TAPCO, Kennesaw, Georgia; LAR Manufacturing, West Jordan, Utah;
Para-Ordnance, Pineville, North Carolina; and DPMS, St. Cloud, Minnesota. Additionally, the Bushmaster production and Remington 1911 production lines will also be relocating from Ilion, New York.

A Remington source tells The Outdoor Wire Digital Network the company will be offering relocation opportunities but an attractions of modern state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities like the one in Huntsville, Alabama is their innate ability to eliminate head count without negatively impacting production outputs.

Usually in a company like this that is an umbrella, there is a lot of 'overlap' in areas of quality, support, IT, and admin, plus there is a cost in shipping and travel to various meetings. getting it all under one roof means that they can slash alot of that portion of their force.

I am betting that is what the bean counters think, but I do not like it, either.

Oh, crud.....forgot to mention that doing all of that with the non-union stuff allows to do that with the union stuff, and break the union.. Not saying anything negative towards the union, but that is a 'side benefit' of all of this I am thinking.

I wonder how much of this has to do with a friendlier political climate in the South. I believe Colt either has opened, or is planning to open, a plant in Kissimmee, Florida. The state corporate income tax is 5.5% and there is no personal income tax at all. If I was a firearms executive, I'd be thinking pretty hard about that.

Surprised they haven't moved to South Dakota. We have a political climate second to none and no corporate income tax.

Give it time and lobby the legislators to "buy" the businesses with tax and/or economic incentives for a few years. It generally pays off in the long run, especially when it comes to creating jobs and making things for ourselves...something we as a nation need to be refocusing on.

I do know that states like SC and AL give incredible tax breaks to companies. Good example is one county over that is considered 'depressed.' to get a manufacturer there, the state gave the company about 25 total acres, repaved the road out front, and created/paved the parking lot, laid the foundation, and the electrical & water lines to the plant. They gave them free electrical and water for 5 years, and a $500 tax bonus for a few years for every person they hired from it or the adjacent three counties that touched that county. Basically, the company was only responsible for the building from the foundation up

South Carolina is also 'right to work,' meaning that anything that union offers they must also offer to the non-union employee for free, and no closed union shops (meaning no union). Bad thing is, it is in this state better called 'right to fire,' you basically sign a a document that they can let you go at any time and for any reason...suck it up buttercup. End result is that unless you are a pregnant minority with a disability, you are at their mercy. the boon is is that jobs that pay well are there in a place where they would normally never be. So there is good and bad in it, and it is pretty obvious which is which

Oh boy, MRC is going to Huntsville? That's not going to help the jobs around here.

Companies want to be near Interstates and populated areas, and as close to their customers as possible.

That means stayng in the Eastern part of the country for the most part

Bean counters don't care one iota about any jobs except their own. Centralizing and outsourcing look good on paper, they'd move all the plants to one big one in Bangalore if they could.

Freedom Group just might be our biggest enemy.

Only the Division that makes barrels.

We have some firearms/ammo manufacturing in SD, especially in the Sturgis and Rapid City area, along I-90. I am glad Dakota Arms wasn't on the list of relocating companies, although it isn't the same company it once was.

So are they still making rifles (production and Custom Shop) in Ilion, NY ?

Like change wasn't needed, and badly, their quality has gone to chitt.
New product design sucks as does marketing, a management change, focused on pride, quality and American made high standards would go a long way in restoring the name to its once prominent place on the top of the list of first rate arms builders.

Moving the buildings will help nothing if they haul all of the dead wood along with them.

Appears to be a very good business decision.

I agree and that is likely part of the reason for so doing

The market sets the price based on perceived need and ability to pay.
Margins and the potential for existence, are only created by containment of costs.
Costs are either income producing or sloth.

There, 4 years of schooling in 3 sentences, yet so many companies fail.

I think you have it backwards. QC didn't take a hit until Freedom?Cerberus started closing plants and consolidating operations in new locations.

There's plenty o blame to go around, but in the end management is supposed to be in charge, yet strong arm unions and poor management decisions have allowed cost to spiral up ward and quality to lapse.
With luck this move is just what they need for a vast improvement, in both management and a skilled and productive work force.
Modern production cells, robotics and high tech machines together can far exceed old methods in both quality and production with far fewer employees.

I hate to see folks lose their jobs like this, but bean counters aside, they can hardly be blamed for leaving the hostile, anti-gun, anti-business climate of New York.
I don't know what kind of union they have in NY, but a moderate, responsible union can be an asset to a company and the employees, helping to create a stable situation for both. It's only when the unions become radical, trying to run the business and putting the union ahead of the employees welfare, that things go south, literally and figuratively.
The problem with Remington is that the bozos that are ruining the company will likely remain.