Rheem Australia is planning to close its air conditioning business, Accent Air, which is based in Liverpool, west of Sydney.
Accent Air will cease operations before the middle of 2014, according to a report on the SmartCompany web site.
Rheem chief executive Matt Sexton said the closure “will result in some redundancies”.
“The closure is a consequence of a number of factors, particularly the high cost of manufacturing in Australia for an air-conditioning market that is increasingly dominated by cheaper imports,” Sexton said in a statement.
“We are very mindful of the impact these changes will have, particularly to our employees. Wherever possible we are looking to redeploy people within Rheem’s water heater business.
"Grant funding will be used to consolidate five manufacturing facilities into three centres of excellence and replace ageing machinery with more energy efficient equipment."
The second factory site set to be affected by the “consolidation” is Rheem’s Scoresby site in Victoria.
Gareth Jennings, spokesperson for Rheem, told SmartCompany consolidation at Scoresby has already started and “the Scoresby site is pretty much a done deal”.
SmartCompany said Rheem will initially make 18 redundancies at the Liverpool site, while the number of redundancies at the Scoresby site has not been confirmed.
It will fulfil any current air-conditioning orders and, beyond closure, will continue to honour ongoing warranty and support obligations for the products so its customers are not affected.
Rheem will maintain the heat pump segment of the Accent Air business for the pool and water heating markets.
Rheem currently employs more than 1000 people in its Australian operations, and over the next three years it is planning to invest around $60 million to further automate its Australian manufacturing operations.
