With the good economic news locally one sometimes also have to take the bad, this one coming from a company that is shutting down in the Port Huron Industrial Park. Some 125 employees will be out of work beginning next month as the Royal Oak Boring facility along Dove shuts down. The word comes from a formal letter sent to the City of Port Huron. The company says it failed in trying to get some crucial funding to keep the plant operating. A “bit stunned” is how City Manager James Freed put the news, given the company had just talked about expanding a few months ago. Freed says he and other city officials will be meeting with the Economic Development Alliance to see what happened given earlier plans for the company to expand. Royal Oak began producing C-12 engine blocks for Caterpillar back in 1999.
