Smith & Nephew plc has figuratively yanked the job-security bandage off 108 employees at its St. Petersburg, FL, wound-care plant.
The company plans to close the factory and lay the workers off by January 9, according to a report in the Tampa Bay Times. Their work will shift to another plant in Fort Worth, TX, the newspaper said.
The London-based company also plans to sell a factory in Gilberdyke, UK, and part of its wound-care business there to SWM, based in Alpharetta, GA. Smith & Nephew employs 91 workers at the English plant, which produces polyurethane films for wound dressings, according to a report in the Hull Daily Mail. Annual revenue of the business to be acquired is approximately $16 million.
SWM will incorporate the Gilberdyke factory into its DelStar division (Middletown, DE), and maintain some Smith & Nephew employees to continue manufacturing plastic nets and foams, the newspaper report said. Smith & Nephew will move the polyurethane operations to an existing plant in Hull within two years, according to a company statement.
DelStar Inc., which the SWM acquired in 2013 for $231.5 million in cash, makes plastic and metal components for the filtration, automotive, healthcare, industrial, food, electronics, and textiles industries.
“This action is in-line with Smith & Nephew’s strategy to optimise its global manufacturing footprint to enhance efficiency and reduce costs,” the statement said.
In addition to their employer’s latest actions, Smith & Nephew employees on both sides of the pond have had brushes with outsourcing to China. In 2007, Smith & Nephew announced it would close a wound- treatment production plant in Largo, FL, and move its operations to China, the Tampa newspaper said. The closing took place two years later, yielding 160 layoffs.
Smith & Nephew, which was founded in Hull and remains a major employer there, announced it would transfer 140 jobs from the Hull plant to China while simultaneously investing $14.1 million in the British plant, according to another reportin the Hull Daily Mail. The plant, where some of the Gilberdyke employees will move, will focus on innovation, the report said.
In 2013, Smith & Nephew laid off 100 workers in Tennessee and Massachusetts, citing the medical device tax.
Smith & Nephew was considered an acquisition target until July of this year, when its CEO announced the company was not interested. When he arrived in 2011, Oliver Bohoun said Smith & Nephew would shift its emphasis from hip and knee replacements to wound care, one of its oldest businesses.
In May, the company bought sports medicine company ArthroCare Corp. (Austin, TX). In the $1.5 million acquisition, the company gained ArthroCare's patented Coblation technology, a radio frequency technique that dissolves target tissue with minimal damage to surrounding healthy tissue. This provides surgeons with an alternative to Smith & Nephew’s strong mechanical blade portfolio.
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