By Tracey Arial
www.thesuburban.com
Datamark Systems, a commercial printer with its head office in Laval, a subsidiary plant in LaSalle and sales offices across Canada will permanently close at the end of this month.
More than 400 employees will lose their jobs. They found out about the planned closure at a staff meeting at the end of February.
CEO Jeffrey Zunenshine also sent his employees a letter in which he wrote “every possible option to continue our operations in one form or another is being examined, including the sale of our business in whole or in part.”
More than 230 of the employees work at the printing plant in LaSalle.
“This is a very difficult situation for employees who have been working in LaSalle for many years,” said LaSalle mayor Manon Barbe. “We are presently looking at all the possibilities to determine all the ways that this surprise announcement will affect the LaSalle community. We want to be able to offer all the workers our assistance moving forward.”
Datamark was founded in 1978, but it’s changed multiple times since then. In 2007, Komunik purchased the company and went public. Within two years, the company was in court protection from bankruptcy and it went into default on April 10, 2010.
Some assets were then purchased by Datamark Inc., which was operated by Frank Heller, Steve Silver, Jeffrey Zunenshine and Claude Perrotte.
Since then, the printing business has been continually shrinking. At the end of the summer in 2013, the company moved its Boucherville operations into the LaSalle plant in a series of rightsizing operations. Since then, it has been owned by 7123628 Canada Inc., and it’s officers include Frank Gattinger and Terry Pomeranz.
Union president Stéphane Daigneault hopes that some employees will be able to keep working to produce products he says are still in demand.
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