SCHOTT Gemtron says it will lay off fewer employees than previously anticipated when it shuts down part of its Vincennes facility next week.
Effective March 24, the facility will eliminate its food display unit, which makes glass panels for commercial coolers.
The food display unit is one of four at the Vincennes plant, which also makes glass-ceramic stove cooktops, refrigerator shelving and bulletproof glass.
In January, SCHOTT Gemtron notified the Indiana Department of Workforce Development of its plans. At that time, the company estimated it would lay off 65 employees.
The department posted this information on its website earlier this month.
But the company has revised those numbers since January, and it now says fewer people will lose their jobs.
Plant manager Bill Baron said he now anticipates that around 25 SCHOTT Gemtron employees will lose their jobs next week, most of them white-collar workers.
Other areas of the plant are performing well, Baron said, so most of the food display unit’s blue-collar workers will be able to transfer to other jobs at the plant.
“In the other units, business has been picking up a little bit,” Baron said.
The unit being shut down has not been in Vincennes for very long. The company moved that production from Madisonville, Kentucky to Vincennes in 2012.
Baron said the company tried but was unable to operate this unit productively, so the company decided to shut it down.
The Vincennes operation is one of 13 North American SCHOTT locations which employ a combined 2,200 people. Other operations are in Louisville, Kentucky; as well as California, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, Canada and Mexico.
Parent company SCHOTT is based in Germany. It has about 15,400 employees worldwide.