{"id":24741,"date":"2024-11-22T12:59:47","date_gmt":"2024-11-22T19:59:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-fabricatings-production-operations-to-leave-durango\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T04:59:37","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T04:59:37","slug":"ska-fabricatings-production-operations-to-leave-durango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/ska-fabricatings-production-operations-to-leave-durango\/","title":{"rendered":"Ska Fabricating\u2019s production operations to leave Durango"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Jim
Jim Mackay, right, CEO of Ska Fabricating, and Brian Pisani, a mechanical engineer with the company, set up the \u201cMicrobus\u201d on Thursday at one of their locations in Bodo Park. (Jerry McBride\/Durango Herald)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Ska Fabricating is moving its production operations to Grand Rapids, Michigan, Chief Operating Officer Sean Bannon said Thursday.<\/p>\n

The decision aims to shift the company\u2019s focus toward expanding market segments such as consumer packaged goods, beverage categories beyond craft beer, container manufacturing and digital printing.<\/p>\n

Ska Fabricating is completely separate from Ska Brewing Co., which isn\u2019t going anywhere.<\/p>\n

Moving production has resulted in the loss of 11 local jobs on Ska Fab\u2019s production team, and the company intends for the transition to take place over the course of the next four months. However, Ska Fab will maintain its headquarters for marketing, engineering, finance and customer service teams in Durango.<\/p>\n

In 2021, Ska Fabricating was acquired by Hanover Partners, a Pacific Northwest-based private equity firm. As part of the purchase, Hanover secured three seats on Ska Fab\u2019s board of directors, initially promising<\/a> to keep manufacturing operations in Durango.<\/p>\n

However, the craft beer market has faced challenges in recent years, with declining alcohol consumption among younger adults, which was among the reasons why the company decided to move manufacturing to focus on other expanding markets for packaging equipment.<\/p>\n

According to National Brewers Association, overall beer production was down 5% across the United States in 2023. With less demand for beer, there\u2019s been less demand for brewing and packaging equipment.<\/p>\n

Hanover has a production facility in Grand Rapids that will allow Ska Fab to offer digital printing and container manufacturing services not related to craft beer, influencing the decision to move.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe change for us is heavily driven by changing markets. The growth in the craft brewery business which really launched our operations in Durango has matured over the past couple of years,\u201d Bannon said. \u201cIt will always be important to our business, and we\u2019ll continue to support that market out of our Michigan factory.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ska Fabricating was founded in 2012 to meet the demand for container handling equipment tailored to small- and mid-sized craft brewers. Its signature product, the depalletizer, helped establish the company\u2019s reputation.<\/p>\n

\u201cDurango remains a vital site for the business, despite the relocation of our production operations,\u201d Bannon said.<\/p>\n

The company has provided more than 1,000 companies with brewery equipment across the United States and internationally.<\/p>\n

tbrown@durangoherald.com<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

11 local jobs to be eliminated as company focuses on expanding market segments<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24742,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[431,582,950,28],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-24741","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-business-general","tag-craft-beer","tag-durango","tag-headlines"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24741"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":78656,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24741\/revisions\/78656"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24742"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24741"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24741"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24741"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=24741"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}