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India - Reliance shuts five polyester units [ 05 Nov, 2008]
Reliance Industries (RIL), the country’s largest private sector company, has closed five of its seven polyester and petrochemical units at Patalganga near Mumbai soon after offering exit option to employees, said sources close to the development. The move, which comes in the backdrop of a global slowdown, aims to improve profit margin amid falling demand for polyester products worldwide.
“The company has shut down plants for manufacturing polyester filament yarn (PFY), polyester staple fibre (PSF), paraxylene (PX), purified terephthalic acid (PTA) and linear alkyl benzene (LAB). However, it is yet to close down the second units of PSF and PFY,” sources said.
As per an agreement reached with the employees' union, the company had given exit offer to almost 800 non-supervisory employees at Patalganga. Around 500 employees in this category such as operators and machine maintenance technicians have accepted the golden handshake scheme which is yet to be closed, said sources.
“Employees having a minimum of 3-5 years of experience have been offered about Rs 20 lakh as compensation. Majority of the remaining 300 employees are expected to accept the offer in the coming days. For the last one month, production from these units has been partly paralysed and employees were sitting idle,” said sources.
When contacted, an RIL spokesperson declined to comment. There are rumours among the workers that part of the closed plants would be shifted to group company Indian Petrochemical Corporation's (IPCL) facility at Nagothane in Maharashtra. “We heard that the company has plans to convert the Patalganga site into a warehousing facility for retail activities due to its proximity to Mumbai,” added sources.
The company had recently converted another IPCL facility in Navi Mumbai into Reliance Corporate Park, which is envisaged to be the controlling hub for the Mukesh Ambani group’s global operations.
The company plans to upgrade and automate most of the old polyester units since the profit margin from operations have shrunk after the price rise of crude oil, the raw material for polyester.
RIL had shut down its polypropylene plant at the Jamnagar refinery complex for a month to improve product swing capability and increase propylene yield. It closed down a polyester intermediate mono-ethylene glycol manufacturing facility at Kurkumbh near Pune last year, to house centralised storage facilities for its retail operations under Reliance Retail.
The Patalganga manufacturing division is spread over 200 acres. According to the company Web site, RIL has invested about Rs 3,000 crore at the location.
Source: Business Standard
Unifi to shift Staunton, Va., operation to Yadkinville, N.C., facility [ 27 May, 2008]
Greensboro, N.C.-based textured yarn manufacturer Unifi Inc. has announced it will shut down its polyester yarn beaming and warp drawing plant in Staunton, Va., and move that operation to its manufacturing facility in Yadkinville, N.C. The approximately 140 employees in Staunton are being offered jobs at Yadkinville.
According to Ronald Smith, Unifi’s CFO, the move will enable the company to reduce expenses by removing the cost of transporting product back and forth between the two plants. In addition, he said the company will implement upgraded beaming and warp drawing operations in Yadkinville to help satisfy customer demands. The transition of operations is expected to be complete by the end of September.
“We’re looking at savings, but we also will be improving our flexibility and the productivity of our assets,” Smith said. He added that once the move is completed, the company’s entire domestic polyester business, worth some $500 million to $550 million, will be located in Yadkinville and will employ some 1,400 workers at that facility.
Unifi also has a polyester operation in Brazil. In addition, it employs about 1,000 workers in its domestic nylon yarn business.
Source: Textile World
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