Milford, Iowa — Polaris Industries has announced that it will stop making all-terrain and utility vehicles in Milford, leaving up to 300 northwest Iowa workers without jobs.
The Minnesota-based company says it will phase out production of the vehicles at its plant in Milford and transfer production to existing Polaris facilities in Alabama, Minnesota, and California. The Milford location will be turned into a storage and warehouse facility to support the nearby Spirit Lake Polaris plant, which will continue to manufacture Indian Motorcycle products.
A company spokesperson says there are approximately 330 people who work in Milford — and they will be given the opportunity to relocate to other Polaris facilities. The company announced in January it was shutting down production of the Victory brand of motorcycles made in Spirit Lake and said they plan to focus on Indian motorcycle production.
Ken Pucel, an Executive Vice President of Operations for Polaris says that since they opened the Milford facility in 2013, the team has performed admirably. He says they played a critical role in making the first full year of their “Slingshot” vehicle a success and have been instrumental in driving manufacturing improvements across Polaris’s off-road vehicle products. He says the company sincerely appreciates their contributions to Polaris. He says they evaluated a number of options to streamline their plant infrastructure. According to Pucel, the decision was difficult because of the impact to jobs. But he says, “discontinuing manufacturing at Milford – one of our smaller manufacturing facilities – allows us to consolidate the production of similar products and improve utilization of our available capacity across the rest of our U.S. manufacturing network.”
