Prepac Manufacturing to Close Whitsett Plant, Cutting About 200 Jobs

Prepac Manufacturing is shutting down its 260,000-square-foot facility in Whitsett and laying off all 200 workers, filing a WARN notice with the North Carolina Department of Commerce on March 3 that sets a May 2 effective date for the permanent closure.

The company, a Canadian maker of ready-to-assemble furniture sold through Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair, blamed the decision on production economics it can no longer sustain. "Despite our investments in modernization and the incredible dedication of our team, the cost of domestic production is no longer competitive against the global landscape, including the continued influx of low-cost Chinese imports," Prepac said in a statement provided to local outlet WFMY. The company described the process as an "orderly wind-down" and said it is focused on minimizing the impact on employees, customers, and suppliers.

The closure is a sharp reversal from just a year ago. In March 2025, CEO Nick Bozikis announced that Prepac was consolidating all production at the Whitsett plant, closing its Delta, British Columbia facility and positioning the Rock Creek Industrial Park location as the company's singular manufacturing hub. Bozikis cited the concentration of demand: roughly 70 percent of the company's sales come from East Coast customers. That consolidation came at a cost to workers in Canada, with 170 jobs eliminated at the British Columbia plant.

The Whitsett facility at 3031 Hendren Road opened in 2021 with considerable public investment behind it. State leaders touted a $27.1 million investment to build the plant and tied the project to the creation of 201 jobs. The company also received a $2 million performance-based incentive through North Carolina's Job Development Investment Grant program, structured to be distributed over 12 years. Whether the state will move to recoup any of that grant money remains an open question; it is explicitly unclear what actions, if any, the state may take.

Affected workers include packers, team leads, machine operators, and edge banders, along with dozens of other positions across the plant's manufacturing, warehousing, and distribution operations. Under North Carolina law, companies must file a WARN notice at least 60 days before a mass layoff or facility closure takes effect, which the filing satisfies. The notice automatically triggers a Rapid Response team from the Department of Commerce to provide transition support to displaced employees.

The plant sits in Rock Creek Industrial Park along the I-85/40 corridor between Burlington and Greensboro, sharing the park with Amazon, American Express, Carolina Biological Supply, and Federal Express. Prepac had also relocated its company headquarters from Canada to just over the Alamance County line when the facility opened, making the wind-down a blow to the broader area economy as well as to Guilford County.

North Carolina's furniture manufacturing workforce has thinned significantly over recent decades, falling from nearly 80,000 jobs at the turn of the century to roughly 28,000 today. The Whitsett plant's opening in 2021 was framed by state officials as a counterweight to that trend; its closure signals the limits of that bet against global price competition.