EverGreen RVs made the first official statement about the company closing this week when Chief Financial Officer Joseph Katona filed a document notifying the state of Indiana that the company had been unable to secure the finances it needed in recent months.
The document, filed with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development in compliance with the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, provides the first on-record details from an EverGreen executive about the circumstances that led to the company’s closing and ongoing layoffs.
The document reveals that the company suffered from a finance shortage for the “last several months,” which it attempted to remedy through “negotiations with various creditors and lenders seeking financing or refinancing through the arrangement of loans and other methods of internally generated financing, as well as seeking additional money, credit or business through various commercial reasonable methods.”
Katona does not explain the underlying reason for the shortage of capital in the document, which outlines the number of employees affected and the dates of the layoff.
The company scaled down employment starting on June 10, when it released 180 workers. Another 61 employees will be released June 17. By June 24, when another 42 employees are released, Katona reports that the plants will cease all remaining operations. The remaining four employees are scheduled for termination July 1.
In total, the document lists 287 employees affected by the company’s two Middlebury, Ind., plants. The plants are located at 10758 County Road 2 and 51700 Lovejoy Drive in Middlebury.
Katona filed the report under the state’s WARN Act, which requires employers with more than 100 employees to give 60-days advance notice if 50 or more employees will be terminated, with a few exceptions.
One such exception to the 60-day notice, which Katona appears to appeal to in the document, applies to a faltering company that is seeking new capital. In such circumstances, giving notice of termination may ruin the opportunity to get new capital.
The company announced on Jan. 5 that it had moved its Bristol-based Skyline RV employees to its Middlebury EverGreen plant. In that release, the company estimated its total employment base at around 400.