The Nortech Systems plant, left, in the West Industrial Park, will be closing later in 2024.

Nortech Systems, Inc. announced on Thursday, May 16, that they would be closing their Blue Earth plant by the end of this year.

All of the production at the Blue Earth plant will be combined into just one plant.

The official notice came from Jay D. Miller, president and CEO of Nortech.

“As we further look for opportunities to optimize our expense structure and plant capacity utilization, we are consolidating our Minnesota facilities,” Miller wrote. “This morning we are announcing the decision to consolidate production of our wire and cable products for the aerospace and defense industries to our Bemidji, Minnesota facility.”

The shift in location of production is expected to be completed by the end of 2024, at which time the company says it will close the Blue Earth plant.

Miller said that all Blue Earth employees will be extended job offers at the other Minnesota facilities and that they hope to keep them all.

“Further, we are consolidating the square footage of the company’s Maple Grove, Minnesota headquarters and engineering facility by almost 30 percent,” Miller stated. “This reduction reflects our current and future space needs which have been heavily influenced by the company’s hybrid remote work arrangement.”

The changes come after a decrease in sales in 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. Net sales of $34.2 million in the first quarter of 2024 was down 1.9 percent from 2023.

Nortech Systems’ Blue Earth plant mainly creates cable assemblies and printed circuit boards. The top 10 defense contractors in the U.S. were their major customers, as reported in a story in the Register in 2013. Those customers included the U.S. Military.

There were 125 employees at the Blue Earth plant, as reported in the 2013 Register article.

What is now Nortech Systems in Blue Earth started in 1964 as Teledyne. In 1968 Teledyne moved to Fairmont.

In 1996 it was purchased by a company named CCI. Then, one year later it was purchased by Nortech Systems, and they changed the name to Aerospace.

In 2005 they were outgrowing their building space in Fairmont and began leasing space in the Telex building in Blue Earth. In 2006 Telex began moving out, and in 2010, with Telex long gone, Aerospace moved everything out of Fairmont to Blue Earth.

Eventually the name Aerospace was dropped and the company name of Nortech was used instead.

Exact details on the move were not released, except that it will be completed by the end of the year.