Meet our people

Cory Ammons, Plant Manager at Gildan's vortex yarn-spinning facility in Sanford, North Carolina, manages the plant's daily production with a focus on safety. Over the last two years, he has successfully led the plant’s modernization efforts.

We met with Cory at the Sanford facility to learn more about his career journey and the impact he’s making at Gildan. Read on to discover how Cory found his fit at Gildan:

How did your career lead you to Gildan?

Everything changed when I moved to North Carolina and took a job as a plant nurse at a local textile mill. Working on the floor, I saw firsthand how health and safety shaped a manufacturing environment. I was so fascinated by this side of the business that I stepped into a corporate safety manager position and earned a degree in Occupational Health and Safety (OHS).

When I joined Gildan, I quickly realized that the Company’s scale gave me room to grow. Within just a year of being at Gildan, I worked at four different manufacturing facilities, learning how health and safety tie back to every part of production. While gaining this exposure, I felt trusted to take on more with each move. Eventually, I became a Plant Manager at our vortex yarn-spinning facility in Sanford, North Carolina, where we use vortex spinning—a process that uses air nozzles to twist fibres—to turn raw cotton into yarn. Here, I was able to bring safety and production together and work toward what I think of as “safe production” as a whole.

What was your biggest opportunity to make an impact?

Two years ago, only a couple of months after I started as a Plant Manager, my Director of Manufacturing trusted me to lead a huge project: the modernization of the Sanford facility. Guided by the principle of simplification, we switched electricals, updated equipment, and redesigned the plant layout, transitioning to a more straightforward operation.

The plant’s modernization not only increased production capabilities but had a direct impact on long-term health and safety initiatives and improved team members’ day-to-day jobs. New automated packing lines reduced the physical labour needed for preparing finished yarn packages. This keeps more team members’ hands off machinery, creating a safer environment.

The trust—the same trust that got me here in the first place—helps me constantly lead safe production. We take near misses and potential hazards seriously, and we’re always looking for ways to improve our operations.

Every day I pass that same trust down to my team members on the floor. Their feedback is reflected in the redesigned Sanford plant, and their input constantly influences new preventive measures. For example, while planning the new layout, we used feedback from machinery technicians to reposition cotton and polyester reserves closer to production equipment, reducing the distance materials travel, and improving workflow efficiency for employees. It’s a small detail, but it’s exactly the kind of rough spot we can only smooth out when people feel comfortable enough to speak up.

What are you most proud of from your time at Gildan?

I'm most proud of watching our team bring Gildan’s strong culture of safety to life every day. Our people have always had a voice, and I see that show up everywhere—team members and colleagues holding our facilities to a standard as if it were their own household, encouraging transparency, and treating health and safety as something we all own together.