Production at Baltimore Aircoil in Paxton ends Friday
PAXTON – Friday will mark the end of production at the Baltimore Aircoil plant.
The company, which has been Paxton's largest employer, announced in February that it would close its local facility and lay off all of its 223 workers by late June. Employees have been laid off in six waves, plant manager Bruce Kietzman said. A crew of 20, Which includes him, the human resources manager and office staff, will remain through September. Workers will take things off the walls and gather the racks and the shelving.
In the meantime, Colmac, a manufacturing company headquartered in Washington, was awarded a $375,000 low-interest loan in May through Paxton's revolving-loan fund. It has used the money to create 17 jobs after it purchased an Aircoil production line at Baltimore Aircoil's Paxton facility. Colmac is already producing product, Kietzman said. Colmac Coil plans to use the Aircoil production line and create up to 25 jobs.
All those working are Aircoil's laid-off workers. Colmac is using 30,000 square feet of the 160,000-square-foot Baltimore Aircoil plant. "We will talk to anyone about leasing the remainder of the space," Kietzman said.
Colmac will distribute Aircoil Evaporators, along with its existing line of standard and custom industrial refrigeration evaporators and air-cooled condensers exclusively through the Baltimore Aircoil representative network in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.
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