Industrial products maker Magnum Venus Products is laying off 47 workers in Kent, according to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) filed with the state of Washington.
The WARN notice, filed Oct. 23, says the layoffs will start at the end of the year, following a closure. MVP is headquartered in Knoxville, Tennessee, and has a manufacturing center in Kent.
MVP didn't immediately respond to request for comment about the layoffs and closure.
The company, which was originally called Graves Spray Supply, was founded in 1938. MVP makes industrial products for manufacturers in the aerospace, marine, wind and pool industries, among others. Its products include spray guns, adhesive systems and injection systems.
In April, MVP announced it was expanding in eastern Tennessee by buying 17 acres of land and a 125,000-square-foot facility. MVP said in a news release it was investing $20 million over five years with the expansion, and the expansion will create 100 jobs over five years in the area. The move will combine the company's corporate headquarters in Knoxville with its assembly and service center into one site.
MVP said in the release the new facility will "dramatically increase production rates, driving down lead times and enabling better delivered service performance to customers."
The company's facility in Kent is 75,000 square feet and employed roughly 100 people as of April. The company said at the time of the expansion announcement that the Kent facility would stay open.
"While we operate a number of facilities throughout the United States, east Tennessee has been our home for over a decade," Tobi Ferguson, CEO of MVP, said in the April release. "The composites and advanced manufacturing resources available here present unique business opportunities to catalyze continued growth for MVP. And with 40% of our customers located east of the Mississippi River, Knoxville is geographically ideal."
