Sit of Carters Lake Water Treatment PlantA flooring manufacturer is closing one of its plants in northwest Georgia and plans to move more than 150 workers to other facilities.
Mohawk Industries officials said Tuesday that the company will close its yarn plant in Chatsworth in August and move 156 workers to other northwest Georgia facilities, according to the Dalton Daily Citizen.
The move came just days after Shaw Industries, Mohawk’s arch-competitor, closed a plant of its own.
Both Mohawk and Shaw have made a concerted effort in recent years to shutter old plants that produce and tuft stapled yarn, which is an obsolete and labor-intensive process, in favor of newer facilities that use the bulk continuous filament process, which is more automated.
The demand for carpet over the past two years has been flat in the face of more popular hard surfaces like wood, tile and vinyl. Hard surface flooring grew at about 3.4 percent in 2014, said Kemp Harr, publisher of Floor Focus magazine.