Vt. Castings
Back in Operation

Hot metal is being poured into sand casts again at the Vermont Castings Foundry in Randolph.

Once again, the cast iron parts are being assembled into Vermont Casting’s prize-winning stoves in the big assembly plant in Bethel.

Also running full-blast is the sophisticated enameling plant at the Bethel location, where the stoves are coated shiny enamels in standard and designer colors.

"We’re back in business," General Manager Dale Trombley confirmed this week.

"We’ve got a good backlog of stoves to build," he said. "We think the wood stove season should be very solid, although the gas stove market will be slow."

In recent years, somewhat more than 50% of Vermont Castings stoves have been gas-burning stoves. The company began, however, with efficient wood-heaters.

Trombley’s announcement is certainly good economic news for central Vermont. The assembly and enameling operations in Bethel had been shut down entirely in April and May because of a build-up in inventory. The Randolph foundry was shut down for an even longer period of time.

Though the foundry is back in operation, Trombley added, it is operating on just one shift a day. The second shift was shut down in December and has not been reopened.

The Bethel plants have generally operated just one shift each day in recent years, he said.

April Announcement

The closure of the Bethel plants in April came on the heels of the announcement that Vermont Castings’ parent company, CFM Majestic, Inc. of Ontario, Canada had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. CFM in turn is owned by Teachers Private Capital, the equity arm of the Ontario teachers’ pension system.

In announcing the bankruptcy proceedings, CFM said the company, which also has plants in Indiana, had been hard hit by the real estate credit crunch. That crunch meant that fewer new houses were being sold, the company said, and that greatly reduced the market for new CFM heating units.

The market for Vermont Castings and other CFM stoves has been a roller-coaster during the last few years. After Hurricane Katrina, the increase in oil prices led to a 50% increase in orders of new wood stoves from Vermont Castings, and as of fall of 2006, the company was increasing its employee force to 240 with the hiring of 30 extra workers.

Despite the further increases in gas and oil prices, however, stove sales (and foundry business from other companies) declined in 2007, until employment stood only at 150 early last winter. Then came the bankruptcy and layoffs.

All the CFM holdings, including Vermont Castings, are for sale as part of the bankruptcy action, and sources have said previously the plant has been visited by several interested parties. General Manager Trombley, however, said this week there is nothing new to report at this time about the possibility of a sale.

Meanwhile, however, most Vermont Castings employees are back to work, and stoves are rolling off the assembly line in Bethel.