Video: Aurora Announces Lowndes County Layoffs

[syndicaster id=’5820966′]

LOWNDES COUNTY, Miss. (Press Release) – On Friday, June 12, 2015 Aurora is implementing a workforce reduction in the company’s Columbus, Mississippi facility. It is with sincere regret that we are informing approximately 15% of our employees in Columbus that their employment with Aurora will end effective immediately.

These actions were necessitated by several factors. First, while our composite aircraft structures manufacturing business in Mississippi has experienced a steady increase in the number of new customers engaging Aurora, at this time both our commercial and military businesses are experiencing unrelated declines in production requirements.

The primary rotary wing aircraft customer supported by Aurora’s Mississippi facility over the past year is facing challenging global market conditions. And, while Aurora recently completed a very successful prototype production effort for this customer, the prototype must now move to test and evaluation phases. These phases will be followed by global marketing efforts to drive demand and sales. The estimated timeframe for increased production orders to reach Aurora necessitates, in part, this workforce reduction.

On the military side, Aurora as a whole and our Mississippi facility stand ready, able and proven as a provider of cutting edge unmanned, fixed wing and rotary aircraft technology. As threats to America’s national security evolve, our company remains focused on developing the latest aircraft platforms and systems for a range of increasingly critical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

While we remain optimistic that initial production orders from our military customers are on the horizon, which would necessitate adding hundreds of new workers in Mississippi, we are currently managing the challenge of converting visible demand for our technologies by the warfighter to actual production orders.

Aurora is a small company of less than five hundred employees. Anytime a workforce reduction is required it affects our company’s culture and disconcerting for management. However, this workforce reduction is necessary to protect the long term viability of our company.

Categories: Local News

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *