FEBRUARY 17, 2004  -  New Manufacturing Facility in Mexico Announced by Flexfab, LLC.  - Flexfab LLC, of Hastings, Michigan, announced today that it will open a manufacturing facility in Juarez, Mexico.  The new plant will support global automotive and heavy-duty truck builders and supply certain Flexfab custom engineered hose and ducting products.

As part of a plan to re-shape the company to be more competitive in world markets, Flexfab's Albion, Indiana plant will be closed and certain products moved from the company's plant in Hastings, Michigan.

This strategic initiative will help keep the company strong, competitive and growing over the long term.

This is not a decision we have made lightly.  We now face an unprecedented level of domestic and foreign competition in these products.  This has left us with an extremely difficult choice: discontinue our production of the components completely, or move part of the production to a location with dramatically lower costs.  By choosing to shift part of our production to a lower-cost location, we are acting to protect our markets for all of our products, and to create a stronger position for Flexfab over the long term.

In carrying out this decision, we will look for every way to minimize the impact on our employees and the communities in which we operate.  Clearly, the closure of our Albion facility will have an impact on our people and the community, but we are committed to ensuring that those employees will be handled fairly and with compassion. We will also be relocating certain pieces of production work from Hastings, which will result in the reduction of some jobs at the Hastings operations.  However, we intend to reduce our use of temporary employees in order to minimize the impact this decision will have on our permanent work force.

Flexfab, LLC is a leading manufacturer of component parts for the Heavy Duty Truck, Automotive, Aerospace and other industries, which require flexible parts for use in extremes of heat and cold.  Products include charge air connectors, coolant hose, heater hose, special reinforced shapes of all kinds, as well as flexible ducting for a variety of applications.