HarbisonWalker International Announces Restructuring

Moon Township, PA – October 19, 2016 –  HarbisonWalker International (HWI) —a global leader and largest U.S. supplier of refractory products and services, announced today that the company has continued restructuring its workforce, resulting in approximately 50 fewer employees across its North American locations.

“To remain competitive and viable, our company had to make tough choices and restructure our workforce, along with other business measures to reduce our fixed costs,” said Steve Delo, chairman and CEO, HarbisonWalker International.

Previous restructuring initiatives this year have included a voluntary Early Retirement Incentive program, along with a hold on filling certain open positions, and workforce reduction in a number of plants to better align with lower volumes.

“A combination of factors – both internal and external to HWI – have impacted our company for at least the past five years. The challenges we are facing include declining business performance amidst changing market conditions that are affecting both the refractories industry and our customers’ industries.” said Delo.

Many of the company’s refractories competitors took actions beginning last year to reduce costs in response to softening demand. During the past year, HWI focused on many things such as process improvement, efficiencies, and productivity improvements, along with outsourcing certain non-essential functions, prior to taking steps to reduce fixed costs through restructuring.

“All of these actions have been taken to position the company for an upward trend of consistent year over year growth and to align our cost structure with what is now a significantly different business environment than it was just five years ago,” said Delo.