Acme Grinding to Close

Jason Sandefur

Acme Grinding Inc. in Rockford, IL, is set to close its doors at the end of November. The business, which grinds or finishes fasteners and other components for the auto industry, currently operates with a staff of nine, down from 40 in 2001. Owner Judy Pike, who has been with Acme Grinding for 38 years, told Agence France Presse that she�ll shut the business down unless she can sell what�s left of the operation.

“If I was 40, I would hang on in there and take out a second mortgage, but I’m 63, I can’t see any light at the end of the tunnel and it’s time to think how I’m going to manage my retirement,” Pike stated.
Pike scaled back her employees’ work hours and laid off staff as work dried up over the past two years, Agence France Press reported.
A major blow came when one of Acme�s primary clients, Textron Fastening Systems, announced in October it would close two more of its Rockford facilities in 2004. Textron blamed excess capacity for the closings and the elimination of about 700 jobs, but Pike said cheap foreign imports were the real problem.
“A lot of the fastening business is going to China,” she said. “It costs U.S. manufacturers more to buy the materials than it costs the Chinese to produce them.”
According to acmegrinding.com, Acme Grinding is an ISO 9001:2000 certified company that had operated thirty machines in a 15,000 sq ft facility at the height of its business.

The U.S. has lost 2.8 million manufacturing jobs in the past three years. Some employers have started added jobs in the last quarter, but the manufacturing sector hasn�t begun to rebound yet. Unemployment in Rockford, which has lost as many as 20% of its manufacturing jobs during the recession, stands at 8% – a full two percentage points above the national average. �2003 FastenerNews.com