Alpek Polyester USA LLC has announced it will cease production and close its bottle recycling plant at 4030 Pottsville Pike in Muhlenberg Township.
The closure, expected to occur on March 15 — will result in the loss of jobs for 100 employees at the plant.
Alpek filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act — known as a WARN notice — with the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry outlining the closure.
In the letter from Alpek Site Director Bob Larkins, dated Jan. 13, the company said the plant closing and “separations from employment are expected to be permanent.” The facility is not unionized, the letter said.
The WARN Act requires that employers give a 60-day notice before closing plants or conducting mass layoffs.
The Muhlenberg plant is one of Alpek’s two U.S. manufacturing plants for rPET resins, or recycled Polyethylene Terephthalate. PET is a plastic used in packaging for beverage bottles, food packaging and other consumer and medical products, according to information on Alpek’s website. The other rPET manufacturing facility is in Richmond, Ind.
Alpek purchased the 270,000-square-foot facility — the former CarbonLITE facility in Muhlenberg — in June 2021 for $96 million. That purchase followed the plant’s auction in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings by its owner, CarbonLITE Holdings LLC.
The Berks County CarbonLITE facility had been open less than one year before its parent company filed for bankruptcy.
At the time of Alpek’s purchase, the company said it needed to get the plant fully operational, according to previous reporting by MediaNews Group. The company said in 2021 that it expected the Berks location to play a prominent part in Alpek’s strategy once it was fully operational.
Alpek, is a chemical manufacturing company headquartered in Mexico. The company operates 15 manufacturing facilities in nine countries and has more than 3,500 employees. It operates eight U.S. facilities. The Berks County site — referred to by the company as its Reading site — is Alpek’s only Pennsylvania location.