The parent company of Vermont Castings, a well-known manufacturer of stoves and fireplace inserts, plans to furlough most of the workers at its facilities in Randolph and Bethel around the start of next week, a company spokesperson told VtDigger.
Hearth & Home Technologies, the parent company, plans to furlough 78 employees in Vermont starting on Nov. 25, said Sarah Wellcome, the firm’s vice president for member and community relations, in an email this week. Wellcome noted that 11 employees across both locations will continue working during the furlough — expected to last “a couple of months” — in order to maintain manufacturing equipment.
But the employees who assemble the company’s stoves, and other accessories, will be out of work, Wellcome said. That’s because the company has decided to temporarily stop manufacturing new products — it has too much inventory on hand as “orders for our products have been lower than anticipated,” according to Wellcome.
“We will continue to monitor market trends and, should orders outpace our forecast, we will increase new production accordingly,” she said, adding, “because of the high levels of inventory, no major disruptions are expected to our dealers or consumers.”
Wellcome said that employees who are set to be furloughed will retain access to benefits during the time they aren’t working. When the company decides to restart production, “all employees are expected to return to work,” she said.
Hearth & Home Technologies is based in Lakeville, Minn. The company is a subsidiary of the Iowa-based HNI Corp., which acquired Vermont Castings in 2014. At the time, Vermont Castings had passed through three different owners in six years.
HNI is among the world’s largest office and residential furnishing companies. In its latest earnings report, the company said that its residential division — which includes Vermont Castings, among about a dozen other brands — saw a slight uptick in orders in the third quarter of 2024, which runs from July to September, compared to the same time period in 2023. But it noted that projections for the fourth quarter of 2024, which started in October, show an expected drop in sales compared to that period a year prior.
“Incoming orders have been negatively impacted by record-low housing turnover, elevated interest rates, ongoing affordability issues, and economic uncertainty,” the corporation said in the report, which it released on Oct. 29.
The company’s 89 total employees in Vermont marks a decrease from years past. In 2018 — following a sweeping modernization of its plants in Randolph and Bethel — it had 100 employees across both facilities, the Valley News reported at the time.
A spokesperson for the Vermont Department of Labor said the state had been notified of the planned furlough and was in contact with the company’s leadership to offer services to employees who are set to be affected.