Cintas Corp. notified the state of Minnesota that it will close the former headquarters of G&K Services, Inc., which it acquired recently, and lay off 232 people in the process.
The job reductions will begin in July and conclude no later than the start of May next year, the company said in a letter to the state jobs agency.
Cintas of Cincinnati agreed last summer to buy Minnetonka's G&K Services for $2.2 billion, the largest deal in the uniform rentals business. G&K shareholders voted in November to approve the deal.
The merger united the largest company in the industry, Cintas, with the fourth largest, G&K. Both companies trace their histories to family-run laundries in the early 20th century.
G&K started when two brothers, Alexander and Morris Gross, bought a small dye company in Minneapolis a century ago and built it by 1930 into the largest dry cleaning service in the Twin Cities. They bought a rival firm, Kronicks, in 1934, took the name Gross & Kronicks and shortened it to G&K in 1943.
Cintas and G&K obtained regulatory approval for the deal in early March and completed the transaction later in the month. Cintas said it anticipates cutting $130 million to $140 million in costs, partly by cutting jobs, from the combined firms by the fourth year they are together.
Cintas, for a time, will run G&K as a separate unit and keep the G&K brand. Eventually, the fleet of red G&K service trucks will be rebranded with Cintas' red, white and blue logo.
Under a 1988 law, companies must notify states of mass layoffs 60 days before they begin. Cintas sent the letter to the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development Thursday to comply, and the agency said it assigned a specialist to provide assistance to affected G&K headquarters workers.
Evan Ramstad • 612-673-4241
