One Danville manufacturer shipped its final product this week, ending 33 years in business.
Engineering Design & Sales manufactured battery chargers and power supplies for industrial and medical industries until electronic manufacturing moved almost entirely overseas, according to a company news release.
President Mark Gignac and founder Roy G. Gignac knew this was coming for a long time as they watched U.S. manufacturers outsource production, Mark Gignac said via e-mail.
Products costing $12 from the Danville facility would cost $2 from a manufacturer in China, he added. EDS didn’t lose orders to direct competitors, but had to close because sales dropped as clients moved the manufacture of their entire product to China.
Component suppliers were simply replaced, he added.
“Danville has been a great place to do business and as my father often said, if the business started in Chi-cago, no one would have noticed,” Mark Gignac said.
Roy and his wife, Joan, founded the company in 1976 in the basement of their Pittsylvania County home after a short career with Disston. The Gignacs left Chicago to work for Disston.
The company moved to a facility in Pittsylvania County as it expanded. In 1989, EDS moved into its present facility in Airside Industrial Park. The facility is now being prepared for sale or lease, the release stated.
During the past 32 years, EDS served more than 2,200 companies in every state and shipped more than 20 million products. Its manufactured parts have been used throughout the world, the release stated.
Roy plans to stay in Danville and his son, Mark, hopes to stay if he can “earn a living.” Mark started working for his father straight out of college and never dreamed he would be on the same job 30 years later.
“Clearly, there is a lot of sadness around the plant closing,” he said via e-mail.
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