Cormier Equipment has been in the Rumford Industrial Park since 1991.

RUMFORD – The town’s first business to locate in its then-new industrial park has closed its doors.

Cormier Equipment Co., an industrial equipment rental business, shut its doors Tuesday, putting five people out of work.

Several have taken jobs offered at one of the company’s other branches. The others were given a severance package, said Brian Richardson, the branch’s division manager at the Rumford Industrial Park since the company located there in 1991.

Richardson, an Andover resident, is now division manager at the Portland branch.

He said closing the Rumford branch was a corporate decision made by National Equipment Services, a nationwide company that owns several Cormier Equipment businesses in Maine as well as 130 industrial rental equipment companies scattered around the country.

“We’ve struggled with maintaining profitability,” said Richardson. “There’s been a drop off in the industrial sector.”

Among the local branch’s reason for closing is the reduction in business with MeadWestvaco, a paper company in Rumford that has eliminated most of its subcontracting over the past year or so.

Richardson said other opportunities to rent out heavy equipment have also diminished recently.

When Cormier’s relocated its business to the Rumford Industrial Park from a smaller site in the town, the gas pipeline was about to be built. Later, the gas-fired power plant located in the same industrial park was constructed. Both major projects used services provided by the company, as did the new wood chip mill in West Paris.

Seeing no major construction projects in the area that would use Cormier’s services planned in the future is another reason for its closure, said Richardson.

The assets and equipment at the Industrial Park site are being relocated to other Maine sites. The nearly 10-acre lot and 60-by-100-foot steel building will soon be put on the market.

Richardson said Cormier’s will continue to serve the heavy equipment needs of Western Maine from its Portland or Oakland sites, and will offer pick up, delivery and 24-hour service for clients in the Rumford area.

Town Manager Robert Welch was sorry to see the first business to locate in the Industrial Park leave the area. But he took the news philosophically.

“It’s just another bump in the road you’ve got to deal with. If they rented to mills, there’s a snowball effect,” he said of the lessening of work offered by the paper mill to outside contractors.

As economic spokesman for his town, he said he will add the site and building to his list of sites available for businesses.

“I’ll put people in touch with Cormier’s,” he said.

With the closure of Cormier’s, Welch said two sites in the town’s industrial park are now available.



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