Small Corvette Supplier Files For Bankruptcy

As the global economy takes a beating, sadly small businesses are the ones who will take it on the nose first. Case in point: Erin Industries, a small Michigan business specializing in tube bending, has filed for bankruptcy. While the Walled Lake family-owned establishment provides components for prototypes and restoration projects, it also supplies parts for military, aerospace, and even the building sectors. However, its best customer is perhaps Bowling Green Assembly where the Corvette is made.

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For the C8 Corvette, Erin Industries provides not only tube assemblies but some components for transmissions. Before you start to panic, the business isn’t shutting down, at least not yet, but instead is entering bankruptcy to hopefully get its financial ducks in a row.

Still, the worst fear is the family-owned company that’s been around since 1975 will close its doors forever. Not only could that put GM in a bind for cranking out C8 Corvettes, it would mean employees and others who depend on Erin Industries for their daily bread would be facing an incredibly difficult situation.

The current economic situation has been placing small automotive sector suppliers under tremendous strain. It all started with the covid pandemic and the transition from shutdowns to surging demand balanced out by all kinds of restrictions, including automakers leaning more heavily into carbon-neutral strategies and demanding suppliers fall in line.

More specifically, owner Steven Atwell told Crain’s Detroit Business that what’s put Erin Industries in between a rock and a hard place was the inability to fulfill a deal made with Nova Steel USA Inc. which it entered into back in 2019. Inflated material costs coupled with supply chain disruptions backed the small business into a corner when Nova Steel refused to pay for late fulfillment.

Source: Crain’s Detroit Business

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