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Management representatives of Borg Warner Inc. announced to employees in several meetings over the last week that their KMS facility, located east of the Kokomo Ivy Tech campus on Morgan Street, will close by mid-2024, affecting all of the approximately 300 employees at that location.
In a meeting on Aug. 21, the day shift was informed that beginning October 2023 approximately 84 people will be let go, with plans for the remainder of the workforce to be out of that location by mid-2024, according to employee sources who attended the meeting.
After the meeting, employees were told to go home without returning to their workstations, and they were asked not to report to work again until Wednesday, sources say.
Calls in the last two weeks from The Kokomo Lantern to confirm or deny any workforce reductions to the Kokomo facility were directed to Borg Warner’s Technical Center in Noblesville. A recorded message about applying for positions at Borg Warner was heard, then the call was disconnected.
Calls from The Kokomo Lantern to Borg Warner’s Auburn Hills, Mich., corporate headquarters have not been returned as of publication.
Borg Warner made news in 2020 by purchasing the formerly bankrupt Delphi Automotive Systems, a General Motors auto parts spinoff in the late 1990s that filed bankruptcy in 2005, acquiring the company for $3.3 billion. Part of the purchase included the KMS manufacturing facility in Kokomo and the technical center at 2151 E. Lincoln Road in Kokomo.
The Kokomo factory had been manufacturing electronics primarily for European automakers. Borg Warner Inc. has approximately 50,000 employees worldwide and has factories and offices in 23 countries.
Borg Warner’s corporate website states that the company’s 2023 second quarter sales rose 20 percent to $4.25 billion over the previous 12-month period.