A maker of components for wind turbine blades that is closing its Lehigh Valley manufacturing plant and shifting the work to Mexico is seeking federal benefits for the more than 60 employees who will lose their jobs.
The petition with the federal Office of Trade Adjustment Assistance was filed by a Windkits LLC engineering manager on June 29 but not posted online until this week. The document notes that 63 employees, including production and maintenance workers along with CNC operators and managers, will be separated Aug. 13 when the plant at 7346 Penn Drive in Upper Macungie Township closes.
“During the past year, challenging market conditions in North America have been influenced by consolidation and reduction of blade manufacturing at our customer locations,” the petition reads. “Due to these challenges, the decision to relocate the core kit manufacturing from Allentown to Matamoras, Mexico has been made.”
The petition is listed online as under investigation until the U.S. Labor Department makes a determination to certify or deny the petition. The TAA program provides benefits and support to workers who lose their jobs due to the impact of international trade, help that includes job training, income support, job search help and relocation allowances.
The filing comes about a month after multiple sources told The Morning Call that work at the plant would be transferred to a facility Windkits opened two years ago in Matamoros, a city in northeastern Mexico near the U.S. border. Another factor in the company’s decision, those sources said, could be that balsa wood — a major raw material for Windkits’ manufacturing operations — comes from Central and South America.
For Windkits, which was first established in the United States as a joint venture between Denmark-based JSB Group and another company in 2008, the closure will end a roughly 10-year run in the Lehigh Valley. The company makes what you find inside wind turbine blades. Inside what is otherwise a big hollow structure are layers of fiberglass cloth and lightweight stiffening materials such as balsa wood and foam.
Previously located in Bergen County, New Jersey, Windkits moved to the 72,000-square-foot site in Upper Macungie in 2011. The company had scoped out other locations in a 100-mile radius, including in New York and Connecticut, but found the Lehigh Valley had a solid offering of trained workers, access to distribution corridors, reasonable cost of living and lifestyle amenities.
In 2013, Windkits employed about 20 people in the Lehigh Valley, including automated-machine operators, band-saw operators, machine maintenance employees and production-line workers. By late 2015, Windkits had grown to 50 local workers.
Despite the news of Windkits’ exit from the area, Lehigh Valley economic development leaders previously expressed confidence the affected workers would find new jobs in the region and that Windkits’ building — an in-demand size — would quickly attract a new tenant.
Other local petitions
Windkits isn’t the only Lehigh Valley company that has been the subject of a TAA petition this year. Two other petitions in the area also remain under investigation.
For one, the union representing many of the 190 workers at the Dixie cup manufacturing plant in Forks Township filed a petition in March, claiming the facility’s closure by the end of this year was partly due to the effect of competitors outsourcing manufacturing processes.
Then, a state official filed a petition in early June, seeking benefits for 45 Dun & Bradstreet workers in the Lehigh Valley who will be affected when the company moves some of its finance functions to India. That petition was filed after The Morning Call reported on the shift in May.
Morning Call reporter Jon Harris can be reached at 484-280-2866 or at jon.harris@mcall.com.
