toledoblade.com --

People in the village of Edgerton in hard-pressed Williams County breathed a sigh of relief Monday after learning that the area is not about to lose an additional 200 jobs.

"That would have really hurt us," Dale Mathys, village administrator, said.

He spoke after finding out that a mass layoff notice that owners of Maumee-based Midwest Stamping & Manufacturing Inc. filed last week with the state of Ohio for a factory in Edgerton was prompted by a pending sale of the company, not a plant closure.

The factory involved makes parts for automobiles.

"We're like the rest of the country; we're just trying to survive," Mr. Mathys added. Edgerton is home to about 2,000 people.

Tim Oeschger, vice president for human resources at seller Brown Corp. of America, Ionia, Mich., said the buyers have decided to keep the plant's work force, although they could have hired new employees under the terms of the sale.

That is why Brown Corp. filed notices required under the Worker Adjustment & Retraining Notification Act for plant employees in Edgerton and in Waverly, Ohio, and for three other U.S. plants involved in the sale, Mr. Oeschger said.

A representative of the buyer, the Matcor Automotive unit of

Matsu Group in suburban Toronto, declined to comment on the matter.

In the mass layoff notice filed Friday, Brown Corp. said it was selling the plants because of a "failure to obtain additional capital and business over the past few months."

Mr. Oeschger said the problems were unrelated to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy case at the firm that ended in November, 2008.

The sale will include Midwest Stamping's 10-person sales and engineering office on Briarfield Boulevard in Maumee. However, the buyers are undecided about the fate of that facility, Mr. Oeschger said.

The sale is expected to be completed quickly, he said, but he could not give an exact date.

Midwest Stamping was locally owned until its sale to Brown Corp. four years ago.

With the new sale, which was demanded by Brown's lenders, the company will cease to exist, the company official said.

Mr. Oeschger said the sale will be good for employees. "The plant is going to go on full blast," he said. "We have a great company that purchased us."

Williams County, which abuts Michigan and Indiana, had the highest unemployment rate in the region in September at 14.1 percent and the fifth-highest rate in Ohio. October figures aren't yet available, but 2,900 of the county's 20,700 workers were jobless in September, according to the Ohio Department of Job & Family Services.

Contact Gary Pakulski at:
gpakulski@theblade.com
or 419-724-6082.

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