news-record.com

WINSTON-SALEM — Hanesbrands is shutting down operations at a hosiery plant that employs 320 people.

The Winston-Salem company said today it is shutting down its plant at 401 W. Hanes Mill Road because of steady drops in sheer-hosiery demand.

The company says changing fashion tastes and workplace dress codes have slowed sheer-hosiery production to the point that it's no longer feasible to run the plant. The company's sheer-hosiery sales fell 14 percent last year and are down another 18 percent so far for 2009.

The facility, known as the Weeks plant, will close by the end of 2010.

In a related move, Hanesbrands will move its sheer hosiery distribution operations from what it calls the East Coast Distribution Center to its existing Almondridge Road distribution center in Rural Hall. The company's 80 distribution employees at Weeks will be reassigned to Rural Hall.

The 240 workers at the hosiery plant will be laid off. The company said it would pay severance to departing employees and allow them to seek open jobs at the company's other manufacturing and distribution operations in the Winston-Salem area.

Hanesbrands' share price was down 3.87 percent to $22.62 per share at 2 p.m. Tuesday.

The Winston-Salem Journal reported today that the closing of the Weeks plant will leave just one Hanesbrands manufacturing facility in North Carolina. The sole remaining plant is in Mount Airy.

In the three years since Hanesbrands was spun off from Sara Lee, the company has closed 12 of 19 domestic plants and reduced its workforce in Forsyth County by nearly half.

In September 2006, when the spinoff took place, Hanesbrands employed 4,900 in the county. The newspaper said the closing of the Weeks plant and two other restructuring moves will drop the company's employment to 2,500 there by the end of next year.