LAFAYETTE, Ala.—Swedish rubber compounder Hexpol A.B. expects to close its Kardoes Rubber Co. subsidiary in LaFayette by the end of the year.
Official notice of the closing came in the most recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification list issued by the U.S. Department of Labor.
According to the WARN notice, the Kardoes closing was disclosed Oct. 18 and is scheduled to be complete by Dec. 31. The move will result in 86 layoffs.
There was no notice of the closing on the Hexpol website, although local papers in the LaFayette area ran stories about it. Hexpol officials could not immediately be reached for comment.
Kardoes Rubber was founded in 1988 by Frank S. Kardoes, who sold the company to Hexpol in 2014 for $31.8 million.
According to the Hexpol Compounding website, the facility has 131 million pounds of annual mixing capacity. It produces a wide range of compounds that are MSHA, REACH and NSF compliant that serve the industrial mat, automotive, building and construction, OTR retreading, conveyor and other industrial markets.
In its financial report for the first nine months of 2019, Hexpol discusses its ongoing integration and restructuring projects in the wake of its acquisition of Preferred Compounding on July 1.
The report noted that the costs incurred during 2019 mainly included "the closing of two production units and Preferred's head office as well as adjustment of overhead organization." Hexpol estimates that the costs related to the restructuring will amount to about $10 million.