Mettler-Toledo will begin to issue pink slips in March to employees at an upstate New York manufacturing facility.
Mettler Toldeo will begin to issue pink slips in March to employees at an upstate New York manufacturing facility. The move comes a little more than one year after the company decided to relocate the facility to another state.
In August 2016, Ohio-based Mettler-Toledo announced it was relocating Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed Inc., which manufactures check-weighers used in the manufacturing of food and pharmaceuticals, to a suburb of Tampa. The company announced it would build a $30 million facility in Florida that would employ up to 500 people. According to reports at the time, the company planned to take about 185 employees from the New York site to the Florida facility.
This week Mettler-Toledo filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) notice with the New York Department of Labor announcing the closing date for the Ithaca facility. In the letter Mettler-Toledo said the site will close on July 1, 2018, and all layoffs should be completed by Jan. 1, 2019, the Ithaca Journal reported this morning. The Journal noted that the WARN letter said 69 employees will be affected by the layoffs. Some of the current Ithaca employees are of retirement age and plan to retire when the plant closes, the Journal said.
When Mettler-Toledo’s Hi-Speed Inc. shifts to Florida, it will share a site with another Mettler-Toledo business, Mettler-Toledo Safeline, which is a metal detection and x-ray inspection business. Mettler-Toledo Safeline develops in-line contaminant detection solutions for the same industries that Mettler-Toledo Hi-Speed Inc. services. The Journal noted that the two subsidiaries will share manufacturing and office space.
Hi-Speed has been in Ithaca since 1945. The company was acquired by Mettler-Toledo in the 1980s, the Journal said.
Earlier this month, Mettler-Toledo reported a sales increase of about 6 percent for the third quarter. Sales for the period totaled $698.8 million compared with $650.6 million in the prior-year quarter, the company said in its announcement.
During the third quarter, Mettler-Toledo completed the acquisition of San Diego-based Biotix, Inc., a manufacturer and distributor of plastic consumables associated with pipettes, including tips, tubes and reagent reservoirs used in the life sciences market.
“The addition of Biotix will further strengthen our position in the attractive liquid handling market and bring us more exposure to life sciences. As we look to the remainder of this year and into 2018, we believe we are well positioned to continue to gain market share and deliver strong results,” Olivier Filliol, president and chief executive officer of Mettler-Toledo said in a statement.
