Timken has announced that, during the next year, the company will be centralizing its support for Canadian customers, moving its customer service function together with its sales and engineer professionals to form an integrated team based in Toronto, near its Brampton CoLinx shipping facility.

In the same timeframe, the company is consolidating bearing operations in North America, closing its plant in St. Thomas, Ont., and moving that production to plants in Ohio and North and South Carolina.

"We anticipate a smooth transition that will result in even stronger service to the Canadian market," explains Frank Mascia, general manager of Timken Canada, in a press release.

The consolidation of manufacturing is a result of fundamental changes in Timken's mobile industries business.

"The transformation of that business has us focusing in new areas of growth and letting go of business that didn’t bring enough value to customers," Mascia writes. "This is particularly true in markets like heavy truck, where we have shed unprofitable business at a time when there is excess capacity in the marketplace and within Timken. It’s become clear that we now have lower demand for the products made at St. Thomas. Given we have available capacity in other North American plants, closing the St. Thomas plant is a necessary step to improve our service and competitiveness."

The changes in customer service stem from an opportunity to improve the company's structure to better support the Canadian market. "In fact, we are offering all of our customer service professionals the opportunity to relocate from St. Thomas to Toronto," he continues. "I look forward to putting in place not only a strong, integrated team in Toronto by this time next year, but also one full of familiar contacts to you."
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