A brick manufacturing company with more than a 125-year history in the Rowan County town of East Spencer will close in April, resulting in the loss of 65 jobs.
Johnson City, Tennessee-based General Shale will close the business it acquired in 2021 along with the acquisition of Meridian Brick.
“The closure of this location is due to shifts in economic conditions, which has led to a sustained decline in demand for the products manufactured at this facility,” General Shale wrote in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification to the N.C. Department of Commerce.
Workers are not a part of a union and have been notified. They do have bumping rights, meaning employees in East Spencer may have the opportunity to to displace another employee. Bumping rights are often created through a seniority system.
Company officials did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
While General Shale owned the facility for only a few years, it had a long history in East Spencer, located about 40 miles northeast of Charlotte. The business was started and owned by Isenhour Brick and Tile, a company started by George Isenhour in 1896, for 100 years. Boral Bricks owned it for 21 year before it was bought by Meridian Brick in 2017, according to a story published in the Salisbury Post.
General Shale acquired Meridian Brick four years later.
General Shale, founded in 1928, is the North American subsidiary of Wienerberger AG, headquartered in Vienna, Austria, and the world’s largest producer of clay brick. General Shale operates 28 manufacturing facilities, 26 retail stores, and has more than 200 partnering distributors throughout the U.S. and Canada. The company has several other physical locations in North Carolina.