GM Shreveport plant to close
June 24, 2009
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The General Motors Shreveport plant will close by June of 2012 or sooner depending on market conditions, according to the company.
The Shreveport plant was not included in the new GM restructuring. However, it will continue to produce the H3, H3T, Colorado and Canyon vehicles.
Also, there will be two additional weeks of furlough this year. Employees are on furlough now and will return Aug. 17, but another two-week furlough will begin Sept. 28.
The reason the local plant was not included in the June 1 announcement of plant closures was because negotiations were ongoing for the sale of the Hummer brand.
GM spokesman Chris Lee said it would have been inappropriate to discuss the local facilities’ future during those discussions.
“GM has had to make some difficult decisions regarding our manufacturing footprint,” he said. “We’ve got too many plants … In order to position the company to have a profitable, self-sustaining future, we had to make the decision to not allocate Shreveport a new product” when production ends for its current lineup, which is 2012.
The plant produces the Chevrolet Colorado, GMC Canyon, Hummer H3 and H3T.
Meanwhile, GM is still in talks to sell the Hummer brand to Chinese company Sichuan Tengzhong Heavy Industrial Machinery Company Ltd.
The sale is supposed to be complete by the third quarter of this year, but the Chinese government has to approve the deal first.
If it does go through, Lee said the Shreveport facility would continue to make the H3 and H3T under contract to the new company through 2010.
Any production after that would be up to the new owner.
Check back here for more details later today.