Corning to resume fiber production

17 Jun 2002

Corning will restart production at four of its five optical fiber manufacturing plants in the coming weeks.

Courtesy of Fibers.Org

US optical component manufacturer Corning is ready to reopen four of its five fiber-optic manufacturing plants after closing them in October of last year.

"Corning intends to restart production at our optical fiber facilities in Wilmington and Concord, North Carolina, US, as well as in Noble Park, Australia, during the latter part of January," a Corning spokesman said. "The company will restart production at our fiber making plant in Neustadt Bei Coburg, Germany, in early February."

The company says that, as previously announced, it has reduced its optical fiber inventories to match its ongoing order rate and its manufacturing capacity will be increased to meet market demand. "It is not appropriate to make a correlation between this action and a market turnaround," said the spokesman.

While Corning has no current plans to re-employ about 1000 optical fiber workers who were laid off during 2001, it will call back to work some staff who were placed on a leave of absence.

"Corning does intend to bring back employees who were furloughed in November as a result of the company's decision to idle operations at its fiber plants," said the spokesman. "Exact figures and our actual operating plans will be based upon each individual location and overall customer demand for optical fiber."

However there is no such good news for former workers at Corning's Deeside plant in Wales, which closed last year with the loss of about 430 staff. "Corning has no plans to reopen the facility or call back manufacturing employees," said the spokesman.

Author
David Collier is editor of Fibers.Org.