SCHOTT Gemtron is closing the glass fabrication segment of its plant beginning this month.
Human resources manager Dean Monroe as many as 90 jobs may be eliminated.
“We don’t know for sure how many jobs it will be,” he said Monday afternoon. “It could be anywhere from 60 to 90. I know that’s a wide range, but we just don’t know for sure yet.”
Currently, the glass product manufacturing plant has 350 employees; seven years ago the work force there numbered more than 450.
Gemtron made the announcement to its employees Friday and issued a statement to the public Monday afternoon.
The statement cited the “current economic downturn in the appliance business” and its “corresponding lack of sales” as the reason for the closure.
The fabricated glass segment will be phased out beginning this month and continue well into the first quarter of 2012.
The work will be absorbed by other Gemtron locations, Monroe said.
The equipment in that portion of the plant, he added, will be not be removed or sold. Production may resume, he said, if demand increases.
And work in other departments, including fulfillment of its contract to manufacture specialty glass for the military, will not be affected, Monroe said.
In the fall of 2010, the company announced it would hire an additional 150 workers after SCHOTT North America received a contract to manufacture specialty glass for the military. SCHOTT invested about $7 million in its facility at 2000 Chestnut St. to fabricate transparent armor for a new mine-resistant, ambush-protected, all-terrain vehicle to be used in Afghanistan.
In 2010 the company was named the Knox County Chamber of Commerce’s “Industry of the Year.”
SCHOTT Gemtron acquired the Chestnut Street plant in 1989. The site was originally home to the Hamilton Glass Co., which began operations there in 1939.
SCHOTT Gemtron, a 125-year-old company, makes glass products for the home appliance industry and other items for markets including defense, aviation, electronics, optics, solar energy, pharmaceutical packaging and architecture.
The SCHOTT group has operations in 42 countries and employs more than 17,000 people worldwide.
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