Kennametal closes Carbidie plant in Hempfield; 60 jobs lost

Kennametal Inc. closed its Carbidie plant in Hempfield a few months earlier than it stated in its initial plant closing announcement last year.

The plant along Arona Road closed at the end of last year, said Christina Sutter, a spokeswoman for the company, which is headquartered in Pittsburgh with corporate offices in Unity.

Kennametal, which provides tooling and industrial materials, said in its July plant closing notice to the state Department of Labor and Industry that 60 workers would be affected by rolling layoffs between Oct. 4, 2019, and March 31.

The company was involved in negotiations last year with the United Steelworkers, which represented production workers at the plant.

Carbidie was founded in Latrobe in 1953 as a company that made high-quality carbide sections held to a specific tolerance, according to Kennametal, which bought the plant from Greenfield Industries in 1997. Carbidie products became an important component of tools that manufacturers used to make consumer and industrial products, including razor blades, bandages, pharmaceuticals, soda can tabs, bricks and electric motors.

Closing the local plant and two plants and a distribution center in Germany was part of Kennametal’s previously announced restructuring plan to reduce costs through moving manufacturing to lower-cost and newly modernized Kennametal plants. The work at the Carbidie plant was to be moved to a plant in Rogers, Ark.

Kennametal CEO Christopher Rossi said in a recent statement the company has made “good progress” on its restructuring and reducing structural costs while also improving efficiency. Closing the plants will begin to reduce the structural costs in the first six months of the year. It expects to save between $35 million to $40 million annually, with pre-tax charges of $55 million to $65 million.