Manufacturing plant closing; more than 200 will lose jobs
An Albuquerque contact lens fabrication plant is slated to close within the next 18 months and a company official says more than 200 manufacturing jobs will be gradually transferred to two East Coast facilities.
The move to close down the plant and lay off workers is the result of a $1.2 billion acquisition of Ocular Sciences Inc., the facility's owner and operator, by CooperVision Inc., a subsidiary of California-based The Cooper Companies Inc. (NYSE: COO), another major producer of contact lenses.
Tom Bender, chairman and CEO of The Cooper Companies, says the closure of the Albuquerque facility reflects decreased market demand for the low volume, cast molded lenses produced at the Duke City plant. A similar situation faces 95 manufacturing workers at the company's Huntington Beach, Calif., facility. Those employees were recently notified they would be losing their jobs in the next six months.
"The Albuquerque facility, meanwhile, will be phased out over time," Bender says. "The problem with both the Albuquerque and Huntington Beach facilities is that products made in these lines are both declining."
Albuquerque's manufacturing jobs will be moved to two CooperVision plants -- Norfolk, Va., and Rochester, N.Y.
The new and much larger CooperVision will have annual sales of $800 million and will be the world's third largest maker of contact lenses. Previously CooperVision was the world's fourth largest producer and Ocular Sciences was the world's fifth largest.
In 2003, Ocular Sciences announced that it would be adding between 60 and 80 jobs to its Albuquerque plant because it was closing down operations in Europe and shifting that work to its Albuquerque and Puerto Rico facilities. That move was made to be competitive with CooperVision, at the time, one of Ocular's main competitors, says Skip Pascoe, site director for the Albuquerque facility.
But now, he says, consolidation will not favor his facility.
"With any merger or acquisition, there is always an uncertainty of how well your operation fits into the new organization," Pascoe says.
As a result of the acquisition, which was officially completed earlier this month, Ocular Sciences will cease to exist and all of its assets will operate under the Cooper name. Bender says his company purchased Ocular because its products, share of certain markets and assets are a good complement for his company.
Pascoe says he notified his employees of the impending layoffs on Jan. 12. Permanent employees will have the option of taking a Cooper severance package. Neither Pascoe nor Bender had any details of what that might include. Employees will also have the option of applying for a position at the company's existing customer service operations in Albuquerque. That facility will actually grow from about 55 workers to 100 positions. Many of the new customer service jobs will be transferred from the Huntington Beach facility.
"I expect there will be opportunities in the new organization," Pascoe says.
Bender says the Albuquerque customer service facility will become the main location for handling West Coast customers.