Tillsonburg auto-parts plant ZF-TRW to close by year end

Town faces loss of 71 jobs as production of brake assembly systems shifts to Mexico

Despite attempted intervention by the Town of Tillsonburg, an auto-parts plant will soon be closing, leaving 71 people without work by the end of the year.

Cephas Panschow, Tillsonburg ’s development commissioner, confirmed the closure of the ZF-TRW plant, which makes brake assembly systems for vehicles.

“My understanding is that their contract is finished in Tillsonburg and they are moving to Mexican facilities,” Panschow said on Monday. In an emailed statement, the company also confirmed the plant’s closure.

“The follow-on next generation contract for the current business at Tillsonburg is being moved to Mexico,” the company stated. “Current production at Tillsonburg will phase out around the end of November with a small crew of employees remaining in December of 2018, and the plant will close by the end of the year.” The town, Panschow said, approached the head office about the closure and hoped to work with the plant “to find alternative products.”

“None of that worked,” he said. “A number of decisions had already been made.” Panschow said he couldn’t comment on whether other TRW plants were in jeopardy.

The MPP for the area laid the blame for the closure at the feet of the previous provincial Liberal government.

“They survived a lot of things. They just couldn’t survive Kathleen Wynne,” Ernie Hardeman, the newly re-elected member for Oxford, said of the ZF-TRW plant. “Under the past regime, it just became too expensive to do business in Ontario anymore.” Hardeman, who annually surveys businesses in his riding about their needs, said the ever-ballooning cost of electricity and unnecessary red tape were the biggest concerns he heard during Wynne’s tenure as premier.

“The creation of new jobs has been primarily in the public sector,” Hardeman said. “Just getting back those that we lost isn’t good enough.”

According to the TRW website, the company has been around for more than a hundred years and, in 1908, made the wooden wheels for the Ford Model T. Tillsonburg Mayor Stephen Molnar said his thoughts were with the men, women and families most affected by the closure who helped to make TRW “a worldclass facility.”

“People at this plant have done their jobs efficiently and are well skilled. They did everything they could to keep the plant open,” he said.

“We want to ensure they have every opportunity for new employment or retraining.

This is a second major blow to Tillsonburg in the past year. Last July, Siemens, one of the town’s largest employers, announced the closure of its plant and the loss of 340 jobs.