EnRoute will have to be printed elsewhere, as Transcon shuts down Boucherville plant

Boucherville R.I.P.

Transcontinental Inc., Canada's largest consumer magazine publisher and one of the continent's largest printers, is closing its Boucherville, Quebec printing plant, one of 36 it has across the country. 

The plant, where enRoute magazine is printed for Spafax Inc. on behalf of Air Canada, is but the latest casualty in a restructuring of the company and an overcapacity in magazine and book printing facilities, according to a statement by Transcontinental vice-president Jacques Grégoire, quoted in a story in the Financial Post. The story also said that one of the reasons the plant is closing is that it is printing fewer of Canada's tax return documents since people are more and more filing online.The closure will result in the layoff of 180 workers.

“Our members are all in shock and so are we,” said Serge Bérubé, president of local 1999 of the Teamsters union, which represents Transcontinental workers. “But some of our members noted that the plant had been on artificial life support for some years now.”

Plant workers had agreed in the last collective agreement to reorganize their work to strictly limit the number of eventual layoffs subsequent to the implementation of major rationalization measures announced in February 2009, labour leaders said. The union represents 125,000 members of all trades in Canada.

Transcontinental, the continent’s fourth-largest commercial printer, tallied net income of $28.9-million or 35¢ a share in its latest quarter on the strength of its digital and print platforms and said it was optimistic for coming quarters.