EAST BUTLER — A once thriving manufacturer is now a proverbial shell of its former self.

Magnetics, which is based in Pittsburgh, has downsized its East Butler location from 25 employees to nine employees in the past 18 months.

Its manufacturing equipment has been moved from the facility, and it is now a warehouse and distribution site.

But two decades ago in 1994, Magnetics employed 650 people.

“We at some point learned that to be competitive we had to manufacture in China,” said Mike Reilly, vice chairman of Spang and Co., of which Magnetics is a division.

Magnetics, founded in 1949, manufactures its product, soft magnetic cores, at a 71,000-square-foot plant in Xiamen, China.

Reilly explained that the cores are not magnetic all the time, and need to be wrapped in copper to pass electric currents through them. While copper winding was originally done in the United States, the industry was moved to China.

“For years we thought we could hang on (in the United States) because of our reputation with manufacturing, but when all of this winding moved to China, we had to move our operation to China, too,” Reilly said.

Reilly said that the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Magnetics employees' union, worked with the laid off employees to help them move to retraining opportunities that were paid for by government agencies. “Many of them took advantage of that,” Reilly said. “These are smart people. They're good employees.”

A complete report appears in Friday's Butler Eagle.