A Canadian furniture manufacturer is shutting down a facility in its home country and moving those operations to the U.S. — but the company and the workers affected by the move are at odds over whether tariffs are to blame.
The union representing employees at the Prepac Manufacturing Ltd. plant in Delta, British Columbia, announced the facility’s impending closure last week, and said that its production would shift to a facility in North Carolina instead.
The national president of Unifor — Canada’s largest private-sector union — suggested in that announcement that Prepac used uncertainty over trade in North America to make the move amid the Trump administration’s unpredictable tariff announcements. The company, the union noted, cited “an altered economic environment” in its decision.
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Prepac officials, however, told a local publication that the environment in question long predated new concerns about tariffs: North Carolina, CEO Nick Bozikis told Business in Vancouver, is simply closer to its customer base in a persistently difficult market for furniture makers in North America.
Prepac, founded in Vancouver in 1979, opened the nearby Delta factory in 2005. In 2019, however, the company was acquired by Toronto private equity firm TorQuest Partners. The North Carolina plant was subsequently opened in 2021.
The closure of the Delta plant will result in the elimination of 170 jobs, the union said; Unifor officials added that they would call for a boycott of the company’s products nationwide — joining ongoing protests of U.S.-made products both in Canada and abroad.
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