Rohr To Shut Down Plant In Auburn; 170 To Lose Jobs

AUBURN

Rohr Industries Inc. will close its 36-year-old plant here, putting about 170 full-time employees out of work.

Hurt by declining business from The Boeing Co. and other aerospace customers, the Calif.-based company plans to phase out manufacturing in the next three to four months and close the plant by year-end.

Some workers may be offered jobs at Rohr plants in other parts of the country, or early retirement.

Rohr says it will provide employment counseling for workers.

The Auburn closure is part of a general downsizing by Rohr, which will lay off 2,000 people in U.S. and European plants. The company employs more than 9,800 workers around the world.

Headquartered in Chula Vista, Calif., Rohr makes engine components for commercial and military aircraft.

The Auburn plant was designed primarily as a Boeing subcontractor, to assemble the external sheathing around Boeing jet engines.

But Boeing does that work in its own plants now. Rohr, in hopes of winning more Boeing contracts, has been shifting other assembly work to Auburn,says a Rohr spokesman.

While Rohr still makes Boeing engine components in other plants, efforts to win back Boeing assembly contracts for Auburn have been unsuccessful, the spokesman says.

Rohr did not say what it will do with its 112,000-square-foot plant here.