PMG Indiana Columbus Closure: 150 Jobs Gone, and the EV Narrative Misses Half the Story

PMG Indiana filed its WARN notice with the Indiana Department of Workforce Development on September 2. The 186,000-square-foot powder-metallurgy facility at 1751 Arcadia Drive in Columbus will permanently close by December 31, laying off all 150 remaining employees. Workforce reductions begin November 1.

The local framing has been EV-transition casualty. That framing is incomplete. PMG's losses began accumulating around 2018 (well before EV volumes moved the needle on ICE transmission demand) which points to earlier pressures: steel powder input cost inflation during the 2018-2019 tariff cycles and Stellantis platform consolidation. The plant's own WARN notice cites cumulative losses over $150 million. PMG's January 2022 acquisition of a Chinese sintered-parts producer called Leader Power Metallurgy confirms the German parent has been deliberately rebalancing production capacity eastward for years. Columbus is the final step in that rebalancing, not a sudden EV disruption event.

The competitive implication is concrete. GKN Powder Metallurgy and Miba AG run compaction presses in the same 100-to-1,200-ton range and have the press capacity to absorb this work. Tooling transfer and PPAP requalification still take months, but they are the natural absorbers of Stellantis, Hitachi, and Valeo sintered-parts volume, and that requalification process is likely already underway. If you are an Indiana shop with powder metallurgy capability in that tonnage range, the displacement of PMG's book of business is a real opening right now. For everyone else, the relevant question is whether your own Tier 1 customers are quietly resourcing sintered components and whether that wave reaches your adjacent parts.