Several months after shutting down its Madison factory, costing about 250 jobs, synthetic fiber maker Unifi of Greensboro says it’s added about 100 jobs at its facility on the other side of the Triad in Yadkinville.
Executive Chairman Al Carey said in a quarterly conference call last week that the new jobs added to transition costs because of new-worker training and equipment purchases. But it boosts production capacity at its Yadkinville yarn plant, the company’s largest, by 40%, he noted.
“This is beneficial for our capacity utilization for the company in North America, and it helps with the economics for our North America business,” Carey said in the conference call.
Unifi makes both virgin yarn and yarn made from recycled plastic, primarily recycled drink bottles but increasingly textile scrap, at the Main Street Yadkinville factory, which consists of five separate buildings, the largest of 812,000 square feet, according to its 2024 annual report.
It announced in early February that it was closing the Madison factory and laying off 250 employees.
Carey said the production has gone to Yadkinville, with some moved to its plant in El Salvador, where the company expects growth from demand in Central America.
Unifi said in its fourth-quarter earnings release Thursday that it completed the sale of the Madison manufacturing facility for $45 million, with $25 million of the proceeds used to reduce the existing term loan and $18.3 million of net proceeds used to reduce outstanding revolving loans.
The facility of about 954,000 square feet was sold to Enovum Data Centers of Montreal, a subsidiary of Bit Digital of New York.
Unifi reported a 12% drop in net sales in the quarter that ended June 29, blaming customers’ uncertainty over tariff-related trade policy. Unifi reported a gross loss of $1.1 million and a gross margin of 0.8%, compared to a gross profit of $10.8 million and 6.9% a year earlier.
Many customers are deciding how much to order and where to order it from to minimize tariffs, but Carey said the company believes that will be worked out in its next quarter.
“And we believe when it’s all completed, the net impact ot our business on tariffs will be neutral to slightly positive,” Carey said.
But CEO Eddie Ingle said on the conference call that the company doesn’t believe it lost future sales, just that customers are holding off. Six large American customers that consistently order more than $1 million of product per quarter all chose to withhold their orders as they wait for global trade clarity, Ingle said. "And as we sit here today in mid August, we see these order patterns improving, and thus we believe that these impacts on our business, especially in the Americas, are transitory.”