BURLINGTON, Iowa (AP) - A Burlington glass manufacturer has told employees the plant will close its doors May 1, leaving the eastern Iowa city with about 30 fewer jobs.
The PPG Industries plant announced the impending closure on Friday, the Burlington Hawk Eye reported (https://bit.ly/1Eq1rOa ). Employees were told of the plan Thursday.
The 29 employees affected will be given an opportunity to transfer to PPG manufacturing plants in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, and Wichita Falls, Texas.
The Burlington plant, which began operations in 1988 in the former Trane building, manufactures tempered flat glass and custom, cutsize annealed glass for the residential, solar and appliance markets.
Company officials blamed the closure on the selling of PPG’s Mount Zion, Illinois, glass manufacturing facility last year. That facility was the Burlington plant’s largest supplier of raw glass.
“The costs associated with supplying raw glass from other PPG locations do not make it possible to continue operations at Burlington,” the company said in a news release. “The glasstempering operations currently at Burlington will be absorbed at other PPG flatglass facilities.”
As recently as 2012, PPG added a solar line to the Burlington plant. The facility was making tempered glass for First Solar, a Tempe, Arizonabased provider of fully integrated solar solutions.
At the time, PPG built a new structure within the plant to test solar glass for quality.
Asked about the future of the Burlington plant, the company said it’s focused on winding down its operations at the plant and couldn’t offer any information about its plans for the site.
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Information from: The Hawk Eye, https://www.thehawkeye.com
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