Sunday, January 12, 2014
Wilder — Concepts NREC, a Wilder-based engineering company, last week laid off seven Upper Valley employees and two employees at its Chelmsford, Mass., location. The cuts total about 8 percent of the company’s worldwide workforce.
Concepts NREC officials notified employees of the layoffs on Wednesday. In a telephone interview on Saturday, the company’s president, Harold Keiling, of Lyme, said the layoffs affected both hourly and salaried staff, including department heads.
The company, which now has 62 employees at its Wilder headquarters, designs and makes turbomachinery for manufacturers and government agencies. It operates four business units — software, engineering services, products and machinery operations. Keiling said the layoffs are the result of a decrease in revenues last year in the engineering services unit, which provides consulting services for the turbomachinery marketplace.
“Three of our four business units have grown in revenues in 2013, and engineering services has not,” he said, citing contract delays and expected contracts not coming through.
The layoffs will result in restructuring of several areas, including internal reassignments in the engineering services unit. All overhead support activities — such as accounting, human resources and office management — are being consolidated into one administration department.
Sales and marketing activities are also being consolidated.
The company recently hired a vice president of sales and marketing, Keiling said, and that person now oversees all sales and marketing activities and personnel throughout the company.
The company now employs 102 people worldwide. In addition to its Wilder and Chelmsford, Mass., locations, Concepts NREC employees work around the world, including in Europe, India, China, Japan, Southeast Asia and the United Kingdom.
The company laid off 13 people in 2003. Keiling said Saturday he couldn’t recall any layoffs of “material nature” since then.
A year ago, Concepts NREC moved its small precision manufacturing operation from Woburn, Mass., to its Wilder headquarters.
At the time, company officials said many of the workers in Massachusetts decided not to move to Vermont, and it was having a difficult time filling the jobs. Keiling said Saturday that those positions had been filled, and those employees were not affected by last week’s layoffs.
The laid-off employees were able to meet with an outplacement professional consultant on Wednesday.
They also received severance packages, but Keiling would not describe the benefits.
Sarah Brubeck can be reached at sbrubeck@vnews.com or 603-727-3223.