HNI to close Kimball's Jasper plant, shift work to other facilities

Employees at Kimball’s 15th Street plant in Jasper were told Thursday the facility will close, with HNI planning to fold its production and personnel into other operations in Jasper and Salem, Indiana, and into other company plants. The shift moves work out of a local site that has been part of Jasper’s manufacturing identity for decades and pushes the burden of transition onto the workers who built their jobs there.

The change comes more than three years after HNI completed its acquisition of Kimball International on June 1, 2023. HNI is based in Muscatine, Iowa, while Kimball International remains based in Jasper, with its corporate headquarters at 1600 Royal Street and a research-and-development test lab on site. The company traces its Jasper roots to 1950, making the closure of another Jasper facility a significant turn for one of the city’s best-known employers.

Jasper’s manufacturing base gives the announcement outsized local weight. The Jasper Chamber of Commerce says workers travel to Jasper from surrounding towns and from eight surrounding counties. A St. Louis Fed community profile from 2007 said manufacturing accounted for about 27% of Dubois County employment, and about 5,800 workers were tied just to Kimball International and MasterBrand Cabinets at the time. That level of dependence helps explain why a plant closure in Jasper reaches far beyond one building on 15th Street.

The move also fits HNI’s broader corporate direction. Investor materials describe the company as pursuing consolidation and network-optimization initiatives aimed at improving productivity and strengthening operations. In Jasper, that means the company is concentrating work at fewer sites rather than keeping production spread across as many facilities as before.

For Dubois County, the immediate concern is where the displaced work and employees land next, and how much of the production tied to Jasper remains in the city after the transfer is complete. The closure is not just a corporate shuffle on paper. It is another step in the steady remaking of Jasper’s industrial footprint, with consequences for workers, nearby businesses and the long-term strength of the county’s manufacturing economy.