A furniture manufacturer that just a year ago had announced plans to expand its North Carolina location and relocate its company headquarters from Canada to just over the Alamance County line has now announced that it will close its facility in Whitsett altogether and lay off all 200 employees.
Prepac, which manufactures ready-to-assemble storage and furniture, filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN notice) with the state commerce department last week, in advance of a permanent closure of its facility at the Rock Creek Industrial Park at 3031 Hendren Road in Whitsett. The closure is set to take effect on May 2.
The Rock Creek Industrial Park along I-85/40 between Burlington and Greensboro is also home to Amazon, American Express, Carolina Biological Supply, and Federal Express.
Prepac had announced in March 2025 that it would move all of its production from its facility in British Columbia to its plant in Whitsett, a move intended to centralize the company’s operations closer to its largest customer base along the East Coast, a trade publication for the furniture industry reported at the time.
Prepac opened its 260,000-square foot manufacturing facility at Rock Creek Industrial Park in 2021, after receiving up to $2.1 million in state incentives through a Job Development Investment Grant (JDIG) that had a 12-year term, then-Gov. Roy Cooper announced in August 2020. Guilford County’s commissioners also agreed at the time to award $597,286 in grants to lure Prepac to Whitsett.
In exchange for the JDIG grant, Prepac promised to invest $27.1 million in a 260,000-square-foot facility and create at least 201 new jobs, plus 244 “indirect and induced jobs,” for a total of 445 positions at the facility in Whitsett.
The original JDIG grant was estimated to generate $376 million in annual gross domestic product and $5.9 million in annual revenue for the state, according to an annual report on the JDIG program published by the state Department of Commerce in December 2024, the latest period for which a report is available.
An October 2025 report on the JDIG program from the state Commerce Department revealed that since its inception in 2003, 449 JDIG agreements had been awarded, and 222 had been terminated or withdrawn. Only 50 grant recipients had fulfilled their investment and hiring obligations under their JDIG agreements.
In a statement, Prepac cited production costs and competition from low-cost Chinese imports as the reason for its decision to “wind down” its operations in Whitsett, where the company produces
ready-to-assemble storage and furniture, such as bookcases, dressers, and cabinets, sold through retailers such as Amazon, Walmart, and Wayfair.
Companies that have announced plans to either close a facility and conduct a mass layoff are required to file a WARN notice at least 60 days in advance of the date on which the closure is set to take effect, according to the N.C. Department of Commerce.
