An Ottawa brand of baseball bats will no longer be made locally.
Performance Sports Group, the owner of sports equipment brands like Bauer and Easton, says it plans to restructure its baseball and softball bat manufacturing operations, according to a press release issued by the company on Thursday.
Under the plan, a facility in Ottawa will be closed and it will stop selling the majority of products sold under the Combat brand.
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Combat was founded in Ottawa in 1994. In 2013, it was acquired by Performance Sports (then Bauer Performance Sports) for $4 million.
The composite technology developed by Combat will now be used in future Easton-branded products.
Performance Sports says it still plans to sell the Combat Maxum line of bats under the current name, but all other Combat bats will be discontinued.
Manufacturing of all Performance Sports bats will be done in Thousand Oaks, California.
At the time of the acquisition, Performance Sports employed 35 people at its Ottawa factory, however, there were plans to double its headcount.
A request for comment on the number of people affected by the closure of the Ottawa facility, and whether they would be offered new jobs, has not been returned.
