Finning Canada has announced the closure of the Centre of Excellence facility in Red Deer. The closure will affect nearly 200 people.

“As part of our quarterly earnings reporting on November 3rd, we announced our decision to exit the Centre of Excellence (COE) facility in Red Deer in early 2017,” said Hilary Anaka, communications manager for Finning Canada. “By redistributing activity from the COE to other locations, we will be able to make more efficient use of our facilities across our network and improve customer service delivery.

“It’s important to note we are not leaving the community as we have a customer-facing branch in Red Deer that will continue to serve customers in the area. This was a difficult decision and we are doing our best to retain and relocate as many employees as possible.”

The announcement of the facility closure came the same day Finning Canada released its Q3 report which showed a 12% decline in revenues. The report said this was, “Due to lower product revenues in Canada and South America, as well as lower new equipment sales in Canada. New equipment sales decreased by 9% due to timing of equipment deliveries in the oil sands, as well as weaker market activity in Alberta and Saskatchewan. This was partly offset by higher new equipment sales in the UK and Ireland and South America.”

efawcett@reddeerexpress.com