WisBusiness.com
Workers at Mazomanie’s Synergy Web Graphics were told by a court-appointed receiver today that the company will be either be sold or closed within 60 days.
Synergy, a Minnesota-based high-volume printing company, employs about 125 workers in Mazomanie. In February 2007, it took over the former Sunny Industries printing plant that had declared bankruptcy and shut down several days before Christmas in 2006 and laid off 400 workers.
Synergy reportedly paid $7.8 million for the assets of Sunny Industries.
Dick Jones, a spokesman for the state Department of Workforce Development, said his agency had received a letter from attorney Michael Polsky, the company’s receiver, who said Synergy will close the plant and terminate employees by Sept. 19.
The company filed a receivership proceeding on Friday afternoon.
Polsky, who is overseeing the company’s next steps, said he hopes the firm can be sold.
For the next 60 days, there are no layoffs planned, and operations will continue, he told Channel3000.com.
“The plant closing notice can be rescinded or it can be extended, but hopefully we’ll find somebody to buy the business and offer people employment before that 60-day period runs out. It’s too soon to tell,” said Polsky. “It’s possible that the company will close.”
The news did not take workers like Joe Ballweg by surprise. Ballweg has been with the company since 2005.
“I knew it; we knew it for a while. It was just a matter of time,” he said. “We’ve had suspicions back in May because we had to clean up the building for a bank to come through.”
“(The possible shut down is) nerve-racking,” said Ballweg. “I depend on this job because I’ve got a truck, and with gas prices I can’t drive no further than here without paying for a lot in gas. I was planning to go to school but can’t do that now ’cause now I don’t have any money to go to school.”
Polsky said he did not know what led to the company’s financial trouble.
“When I met with the employees, I told them that I needed their help to make the company continue to operate, that we needed the work to get done, that we needed the quality levels to maintain,” Polsky said.
“I’m probably going to get a couple of part-time jobs,” said Ballweg. “I just don’t know what I’m going to do. A lot of the guys I work with are upset right now because they don’t know what’s going on.”
