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Glit-Microtron announces Wilkes plant closing; Wilkes PDA looking for new industrial tenants A manufacturer that promised to employ scores of Wilkes County workers has announced that it will close operations here next March. Officials of Glit-Microtron and its parent company, Katie Industries, Inc. met with Wilkes County Commission Chairman Sam Moore recently, just before they visited the plant to announce the March 2007 closing to the workers. The closing will not mean any layoffs, because only handful of Wilkes County employees were ever hired at the plant after Katy Industries, Inc., acquired all of the assets of Washington International Non- Wovens, LLC (WIN) in the summer of 2005. Most of the employees came from Glit-Microtron's facility in Wrens, Ga., which employs more than 200 people, and most will stay with the company at that location. The company representatives said that the Washington plant's production of abrasives will be consolidated with production at the Wrens facility, Moore said. Apart from the lost promise of jobs in Wilkes County, the closing has another impact. The property, the former SCT, former Washington Manufacturing facility on the Sharon Road, is owned by the Washington Wilkes Payroll Development Authority, and the PDA will need a new tenant to pay the rent. "We're actively looking for a new industry for this building," Moore said. "And we have several prospects - it's a good, 85,000-squarefoot building on 50-odd acres, and it's near the old International Paper property that's just become available." When Glit-Microtron announced the purchase of WIN last year, the company predicted hiring up to 45 people in the first year and said the 58-acre site had the capacity to employ as many as 100.
"This isn't the first company that failed to live up to what they said," Moore said. "You can go back to Wellington, to Persimmon Homes, and other companies that moved in with a lot of promises, then went bankrupt or went away. That's just the way things are in business. But we're going to keep trying, to get new industry and new jobs. We're working on that every day."
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