SHEBOYGAN - A local furniture manufacturer’s parent company has been looking to move out of Mayline's Sheboygan headquarters since acquiring the business last year, a corporate spokesperson confirmed this week.
“Since we acquired Mayline, we have been looking for a new site for the Sheboygan operation,” Polly Filing, spokesperson for Liberty Diversified International, said Wednesday.
When and where Mayline could move hasn’t been finalized, Filing said. The company, known as Mayline-Safco since a corporate acquisition last year, is owned by Liberty Diversified, a Minneapolis company that owns several other businesses.
Filing didn’t confirm whether the company might close its Sheboygan location, which employs an estimated 185 workers in a factory and office spaces along North Commerce Street. She noted the company has considered at least one other site in Sheboygan, but has also looked at “multiple states and locations.”
“Like I said, we have not reached a decision where the new Mayline operations will be located,” she said.
Safco Products acquired Mayline in 2016. Both specialized in producing office furniture, according to a news release last year announcing the acquisition.
The acquisition, though, didn’t include purchase of Mayline’s real estate or buildings, Filing said, and the company has been looking for a new site ever since.
“We’ve told employees from the time that we purchased them that that operation would need to be relocated, whether that was in Sheboygan or elsewhere, because we don’t own the land or the site,” Filing said.
Asked this week about a rumored move by the company, Chad Pelishek, Sheboygan’s city planning and development director, said that “was a potential.”
“But we have not heard of a confirmation that that is indeed what’s happening,” he said. He directed other questions to the company.
Sheboygan Mayor Mike Vandersteen said Thursday the city hasn’t heard anything final from the company about future plans.
“We know that the company that is renting the buildings they’re in right now, and they had expressed a desire to build something different that would be more suited to their business,” he said.