Eric Wieffering has covered Minnesota's economy and business community for more than two decades. His column appears two to three times a week, including Sunday.
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Hutch Tech: Too little, too late?
Posted by: Eric Wieffering under Minnesota technology, The economy Updated: March 8, 2011 - 10:46 AM
To some degree, the people of Hutchinson have been bracing for this moment ever since their namesake company's fortunes took a dramatic turn for the worse almost three years ago. The company has shed about 2,000 jobs since then. Still, the impact of the latest cuts is hard to overstate: the elimination of up to 40 percent of all jobs, including nearly half in Hutchinson.)
(One measure of how depressingly familiar this type of news has become for Hutch Tech: The quote that accompanied today's news is, word-for-word, the same as the one the company issued in '09, when it shut its South Dakota facility and laid off 300 employees. The only difference was the executive whose mouth the words were attached to.)
A year ago, Hutch announced plans to build its first overseas production facility, in Thailand. The company is banking on that facility to help claw its way back to profitability, but given that many of its competitors moved manufacturing to Asia a decade ago or more, did Hutch wait too long?
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