Kinze Manufacturing has announced it will lay off 193 employees, effective Aug. 1.
The layoff announcement was posted July 31 on the Iowa Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) page.
The layoff affects 193 of Kinze’s 815 employees in Williamsburg, according to Kinze officials. No other reductions are currently planned, company officials said.
“We deeply regret the necessity of this action,” Kinze president Susanne Veatch said in a statement. “This decision was not made lightly, and it is a direct response to current ag market realities.”
Kinze Manufacturing, founded in 1965, is a global manufacturer of planters, grain carts and high- speed tillage equipment. The family owned and operated company is headquartered in Williamsburg. The company also opened a Kinze Europe plant in Vilnius, Lithuania in 2013, which manufactures additional products for its Europe and Eastern Europe markets.
The layoff comes at a difficult time for the agricultural equipment manufacturing industry. John Deere, based in Moline, announced several layoffs across the company, including a combined 319 salaried workers at John Deere World Headquarters in Moline and John Deere Harvester Works in East Moline, announced July 24.
Those layoffs follow significant Deere production workforce reductions across the Midwest. They include more than 600 hourly jobs at John Deere plants in East Moline, Davenport and Dubuque, Iowa, which were to be effective on Aug. 30.
Previously in June, production workers at several John Deere facilities were notified of layoffs, including John Deere Des Moines Works in Ankeny, Iowa, 16 layoffs; John Deere Intelligence Solutions, Urbandale, Iowa, 58; and John Deere Waterloo Works, 49.
