LEWISTON — Thom Labrie doesn’t mince words when he discusses the reason he’s closing Auburn Machinery.

“It’s one of the side effects of the deindustrialization of America,” he says.

“China,” he adds, is the root of the problem.

He blames the world’s most populous nation for providing the low-cost labor that’s drained jobs and business from Maine.

“Look at all the plant closings all around Maine,” Labrie said.

Products once made at places such as Forster Manufacturing in Strong, he said, are now being turned out in China at a fraction of the cost to make them in Maine. With wood products plants closing at a record pace in Franklin and Oxford county towns, Labrie has found Auburn Machinery no longer has a local customer base.

Auburn Machinery used to make the tools those wood products companies would use to make products. Now, he said, China has copied some of his company’s products. It sells the knockoffs for less than it cost Labrie to make them.

To make matters worse, he said, when companies fold, their equipment gets sold off at auction. Other manufacturers have found they can buy equipment for pennies on the dollar at plants’ going-out-of-business auctions. Why buy new from Auburn, he suggested, when huge savings are in the offing elsewhere.

Now Labrie is hoping to keep the auctioneer at bay. He’s put price tags on practically everything in Auburn’s 150 Summer St. building. A practically new conference room table with six chairs can be had for $475. Another table, for $20.

Labrie hopes to sell off the office equipment, along with his existing stock of machines designed to do practically everything with wood. He’s selling the equipment Auburn used to make the machinery, too.

Three people, besides Labrie, are overseeing the liquidation. The rest of his work force, once 20 people, is gone.

Labrie restarted Auburn Machinery in 1976. The company had gone through closure years earlier when the shoe-making industry that it once catered to largely disappeared from the local scene. Labrie said targeting Maine’s then-flourishing wood products industry seemed like a safe bet then.

In recent years, he refocused Auburn Machinery’s operations. Besides making equipment for general woodturning needs, it looked to help fatten the bottom line of those businesses. New machines were developed to turn waste wood into value-added products. The company added an education component to encourage wise use of wood and to deal with problem areas on old lumber, such as lead paint.

He received multiple Maine Technology Institute grants to help in his research and development. He looked to do business with government entities.

In the end, Labrie said, the orders needed to support the operations weren’t there.

He hasn’t set a closure date. The doors will be open to people who want to buy equipment, machinery, tools and tables.

And, Labrie said, there may be yet another Phoenix-like rise of Auburn Machinery in the future. He has a plan, he said, “that could re-energize the Maine forest products industry.”

He’s already spoken with some the industry’s movers and shakers, as well as people in government, about how that might work. He plans to meet again soon “with a good cross section of people” who might share his vision.

It could, Labrie said, “separate us from the rest of the country and actually grow the wood products industry in Maine.”

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