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    Struggling Nylex to close plastics factory
    Andrew Trounson
    February 07, 2006
    PLASTICS and water equipment company Nylex is to shut down manufacturing at its vinyl and fabrics plant in Victoria with the loss of 50 jobs - the latest in a string of closures to hit manufacturing.

    Struggling in the face of import competition from Asia and a high Australian dollar, Nylex has decided it cannot afford to invest the more than $50 million needed to modernise the 60-year-old plant at Mentone in Melbourne. It will cease manufacturing next month.

    In its heyday during the 1960s and 70s the plant employed over 1000 people and made a range of plastic products, including vinyl records. Now just 70 people work there.

    "It is an aged facility and to get it up to a competitive configuration in Australia would require a capital investment that would never provide a return," Nylex chief executive Glen Casey said.

    Nylex will retain a warehousing and distribution business at the site which will employ 20 people. It will also keep its finishing plant at Sale in eastern Victoria. But it will now import products from Malaysia.









    The mentone plant was the only one of its kind in Australia or New Zealand with the necessary machinery to produce products for the car, furniture and kitchen sectors.

    For Nylex, the move virtually completes a long restructuring as it sold off its plant hire and automotive trim businesses. It is in the process of selling its Exacto automotive plastics business in Adelaide. Nylex expects to save $5 million a year from the closure at Mentone. This will initially cost it $8 million in redundancy payments and other closure costs.

    The shut-down came as no surprise to workers who have seen the business dwindle from a 300-person operation two to three years ago. But laboratory supervisor Phil Kelly, 53, now faces the prospect of finding work outside the plant where he started working 37 years ago as a 16-year-old store boy.

    "I worked myself up, did courses, and where does it get you?" Mr Kelly said. Given his age, he isn't optimistic on his job prospects. "They really don't cater for older people out there."

    He has a divorced son at home on a disability pension after being injured in a car accident, and Mr Kelly and his wife help look after their son's six children at weekends. Mr Kelly's other son is an engineer at a Nylex plant at nearby Seaford. Nylex said it would pay all entitlements and provide workers with counselling and outplacement services. Nylex shares were unchanged at 14.5c.


 
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