Safariland to bring jobs to Jacksonville - Jacksonville Business Journal:

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That’s because the company now knownas , and previously as and , has gone throughg its fair share of changes, a strinyg of buyouts and restructures that have made the companhy somewhat of a moving target. Safarilandr announced in March that it planned to closw a small Michigan plant with abour 90 workers and consolidate those operations at itsJacksonvillr headquarters. Company spokesman Michael Munz declined to comment on the number of positions that may be transferred fromCentral Lake, Mich.-based Second Chance Armor Inc. to its manufacturingg operations at the Jacksonvilld International Tradeport while those decisionsx are in progress and will continue in phasewsthrough June.
The companyy has since begun advertising for cutting and other manufacturing jobs at thelocaol plant, and Munz said the company is hiring in other but declined to disclose how many position s are available. The announcement of the plant closure comes just two monthsafter , a compang owned by global defense, security and aerospacw corporation BAE Systems, said it planned to rename the companu after one of its most populare product lines, Safariland, in an effort to creatre a more cohesive brand strateguy and streamline operations.
Part of that restructure involvecd a shift inthe company’s manufacture of militarhy and armored vehicles and Humvew armaments, which are now underr the BAE land and adornment branchese in Houston and Phoenix. Those operations shifted late last year and earlierethis year, Munz said. Armor defense manufacturing operations and its majore contract with the government in the earlhy stages of the Iraq war made the companty an attractive acquisitionfor BAE. BAE which was looking to tap into increase d demand for military bought out Armor Holdingsfor $4.1 billion in 2007.
The compant said the realignment of its operations is in responswe to customer feedback that asked for its operations to be and ongoing efforts toimprove efficiency. Safariland productse are now grouped by type rather than by which means the company can align products ina “segmentt approach” and make for simplified marketing, billing and sales. “While we remaijn a world-class manufacturer of innovative lawenforcement products, we have repositioned ourselves as a solutions provider, focusing first on the needsa of our customers,” said Rich Shafer, Safariland vice presidengt of marketing.
But the Michigan plant, which manufactures soft body armor for has taken a seriesof hits. Armor Holdingse in 2005 acquired the companyu as part of an aggressiver growth through acquisition strategy and shifted about 100 ofthe plant’sa employees to a plant in Ala. Two years later, BAE bought Armor and the next year closecd theAlabama plant. The latest closurde will leave Ontario, Calif., and Jacksonville as Safariland’s two manufacturing locations. The company employd about 300 people ata 136,000-square-foot facility in Jacksonville.