CHINA GROVE – Hitachi Metals North Carolina will be closing a China Grove facility that manufactures parts for the automotive industry permanently, with all operations concluding by September 30, 2022.

The company disclosed the closing in a letter required under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, or WARN Act, sent to the North Carolina Department of Commerce earlier this month.

The letter, which is dated July 14, 2022, and is signed by the company’s president and CEO, Toru Koizumi, notes that 81 workers at the facility will be terminated.

Such terminations will occur between September 30, 2022 and December 31, 2022.

“Affected employees will be paid all wages and other benefits to which they are entitled through their date of termination,” the letter, which was obtained by WRAL TechWire upon request, reads.

And all employees have received notice of the closure and the termination of employment “at least 60 days before their terminations are scheduled to occur,” the letter reads.

According to a company Facebook page, this plant “specializes in manufacturing ceramic ferrite magnets for the automotive industry.”

The firm is wholly-owned by Hitachi Metals Ltd., a Tokyo, Japan-based company that employed about 6,500 employees as of April 1, 2020, with 10 manufacturing subsidiaries and four sales offices in the United States, according to the firm’s website.

Arrival, a manufacturer of electric vehicles, may also soon lay off employees in the Charlotte region, a report from TechCrunch last week noted.

And two Charlotte-area companies in the mortgage industry disclosed layoffs earlier this year, as well.

Report: Arrival, with North American headquarters in Charlotte, could lay off 30% of workers