General Magnaplate Corp. has announced that it will be closing its Ventura, CA, facility and will serve West Coast customers directly from its Arlington, TX and Linden, NJ operations. The engineering coatings company has reported two main reasons for the facility closure: difficult business conditions created by the State of California and the settlement of a potential lawsuit against subsidiary General Magnaplate California threatened by the Environmental Defense Center (EDC) of Santa Barbara, CA. The EDC claimed that General Magnaplate Corp. had violated the Clean Water Act, which the Company vigorously denies.
“After 36 successful years in Ventura we have made the extremely difficult decision to close our facility,” reports Candida Aversenti, CEO of General Magnaplate Corporation, a woman owned company. “This is a very sad day for our employees and for my family who have a long history of job creation in this area, but the simple fact is that the State of California does not provide a business friendly environment. Increases in Workers Compensation costs and government regulations, combined with predatory citizens groups and law firms that make their living entirely by preying on businesses, have left us with no other choice but to shut down our California facility. This is in stark contrast to our New Jersey and Texas facilities which are flourishing in small business-friendly environments created by the respective local governments and environmental agencies.”
Reacting to the allegations by the EDC that the company’s facility was discharging polluted storm water into the Santa Clara River, General Magnaplate’s President and COO, Edmund Aversenti, commented, “General Magnaplate is not in violation of the Clean Water Act and ongoing investigations suggest that the alleged polluted storm water runoff from our facility actually came on to our property from neighboring properties exempt from CWA compliance. We have agreed to settle with the EDC for purely economic reasons. This is particularly upsetting given that we have a strong SWPPP (Storm Water Pollution Prevention Plan) in place at the California facility and have contracted consultants to ensure that we are in compliance. General Magnaplate takes great pride in being environmentally responsible corporate citizens.”
Candida Aversenti added, “General Magnaplate’s coatings have an inherently positive effect on the environment, something that our founder, Dr. Covino, promoted many years before the current environmental trend. He believed that the advancement of metal coatings would have a positive impact on the use of natural resources. Because our coatings improve the performance of metals, more abundant common metals can be used as substitutes, thereby preserving rare alloy ores. And by using coatings to preserve the life of metal parts, our customers are also able to reduce the amount of raw materials required for manufacturing and decrease the amount of scrap. Furthermore, reducing the need to make new parts also conserves energy used in manufacturing processes. There are many, many positive environmental effects to be had from the use of coatings for metal components.”