NovaScotian Crystal permanently closing due to COVID-19 public health restrictions

Halifax company announces it will close Nova Scotia Crystal says the losses it sustained during the pandemic too much for it to sustain. Jonathan MacInnis reports.

HALIFAX — NovaScotian Crystal is permanently closing its doors as a result of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

The company announced the news Thursday in a written release.

“Without a doubt, it was a difficult decision,” said Brian Tebay, the senior craftsman at NovaScotian Crystal.

NovaScotian Crystal has been in operation for more than 20 years and creates mouth-blown, hand-cut crystal.

“Due to COVID-19, this past year has been challenging for many businesses and NovaScotian Crystal was certainly not exempt,” said the company in a news release on Thursday. “During the pandemic we continued to benefit from positive online sales but we lost the significant portion of business from our retail showroom.”

In the news release, the company says part of the reason for their closure was the lack of cruise ship visitors and tourists. Public health restrictions also made a negative impact on their production capacity. With guidelines in place, it cut the products the company could normally produce in half.

“We work in teams and two members on the team have to share a blowing iron so, within a minute they would blow into the same pipe,” explained Tebay.

The company says due to the challenges over the past year, they are no longer able to envision a sustainable business in the foreseeable future.

“We are extremely disheartened,” said the company, in their written release Thursday. “Despite producing world-class product, the hope of an improving economy and a longstanding and supporting customer base, the current obstacles cannot be overcome.”

NovaScotian Crystal has a team of 37 employees and craftsman.

They say until their doors are closed for good, they plan to do business as usual.

“Our team’s efforts will be on fulfilling current customer orders and, to the best of our ability, other orders that may come in before mid-February. Customers may have collections they will want to complete, and we will do our utmost, with available resources, to fulfill these,” reads the written release from the company.

Since news broke of the closure on social media, customers have been trying to get their hands on whatever product remains.

Since Thursday, more than 1,800 orders have been placed.