A Spring City, Tenn., plant that once employed 150 workers will close by the end of the year.
Huber Engineered Woods announced Wednesday its 14-year-old specialty building products facility will shut down by December. Huber will lay off the remaining 28 employees at the plant.
Huber has run with a skeleton crew since the end of 2008 when the plummeting housing market caused 66 people to be laid off in April and 54 in December. At its peak four years ago, the factory was running 24 hours a day, seven days a week and employed 150 people.
The company cited the continued weakness of residential construction as the reason for the closing.
“The market for those materials has just been stagnant for so long,” said Mike Pigott, a company spokesman. “They kept hoping it would come back, but it stayed down for so long that they can’t keep going past the end of the year.”