Columbus manufacturer files notice to lay off nearly 100 employees

A Columbus manufacturer is closing a plant near the end of July that could leave nearly 100 workers without a job.

Gildan Yarns, LLC, a division of the Montreal-based corporation Gildan, will close its plant at 3313 Fourth Ave. on July 28. Workers were notified about the closure Wednesday afternoon, said Garry Bell, Gildan’s Vice President of Corporate Marketing and Communications.

The Fourth Avenue site produced yarn for athletic socks sold under the Gildan family of brands. The demand for those socks has decreased, resulting in the plant’s closure, according to company officials.

“We’ve looked at a lot of options and what we could do with the facility,” Bell said. “There was no path forward.”

A federally-required layoff/closure notice that Gildan filed with the Georgia Department of Labor stated that an estimated 97 employees would be affected.

The company owns two facilities in Columbus — the Fourth Avenue site and another at 16 Corporate Ridge Parkway in east Columbus. Gildan also owns five other yarn-spinning facilities in the country— four in North Carolina and one in Cedartown, Georgia.

Some workers at the Fourth Avenue location could get positions at the company’s other locations, but some will be let go, Bell said.

“If they can’t move or new positions don’t open at the (other) facilities, then 97 people at the end of July would lose their job,” he said.

The layoffs come more than a year after Gildan said it was adding 80 jobs in Columbus in response to increased demand for products that use the brand’s specialty yarns.

Most of those new positions went to the Corporate Ridge Parkway location, which produces specialized yarn for t-shirts — a growing market for the company. About 30 Columbus employees had been moved from the Fourth Avenue site to the Corporate Ridge Parkway location to fill open positions and meet demand, Bell said.

Gildan acquired Swift Spinning Mills in July 2017, according to the online site, eTextile Communications. Swift was a Columbus-based company that had been in operation since 1906.

Gildan is a clothing manufacturer whose brands include Gildan, American Apparel, Comfort Colors and several others. The company’s U.S. yarn spinning operation employs about 1,500 and is the largest domestic consumer of American cotton, Bell said.

This story was originally published May 31, 2019 at 1:22 PM.