Irmo, SC, March 10—The State, a Columbia, South Carolina newspaper, reported that Honeywell’s nylon carpet fibers plant near Irmo will lay off 65 of its 460 workers this month as its parent continues looking to sell its nylon plants.
The newspaper said the cuts were announced to employees last week and will be competed by month’s end. The news was attributed to Rob Norman, a Honeywell spokesman in Hopewell, Va.
The layoffs follow 420 job cuts in South Carolina since April 2003, when Honeywell bought the nylon business of BASF of Germany. The deal included two plants near Anderson and Clemson that now employ 852 workers, about 285 fewer than 2003.
Before the 14-percent job cut currently under way, Irmo had lost 135 jobs in the past two years.
AlliedSignal opened the plant in the early 1960s and employed 1,550 people there in 1996. The plant had about 650 workers three years later, when AlliedSignal and Honeywell merged .
The latest cuts stem from a decline in demand in the past year for the plant’s main product: a version of nylon sold as bales of short, chopped fibers. This staple fiber is shipped to mills spinning yarn for carpet.
Last fall, Honeywell closed its staple fiber line in Chesterfield, Va., leaving Irmo as its sole producer of staple fiber, a thinning patch of a flat carpet market.
Last year, the industry made 2 billion pounds of nylon for carpets, about the same amount it made in 1994, but staple fibers’ share fell to 30 percent, according to the American Fiber Manufacturers Association in Arlington, Va.
U.S. staple production fell 2 percent last year, leaving producers with expensive equipment operating at 79 percent of its capacity. Meanwhile, equipment making the alternative fiber hummed along at 91 percent of capacity.
The alternative is making fibers as twisted bundles of long, continuous filaments (think of stranded copper wire). Making carpet from filament yarn is cheaper because it requires fewer steps, said Frank Horn, president of the industry association’s research bureau.
But staple yarn will linger because it is softer and offers carpet makers one of the few options on their styling palette, Horn said. "It’s a good product."
The Irmo plant will continue to make staple fiber. Some filament fiber is made at Irmo, but the bulk comes from the Upstate plants, said Norman, the Honeywell spokesman.
