Hexpol Compounding to close US site by end of 2019

Lafayette, Alabama – Swedish rubber compounder Hexpol AB expects to close its Kardoes Rubber Co. subsidiary in LaFayette by the end of the year.

Official notice of the closing came in the most recent Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification list issued by the US Department of Labor.

According to the WARN notice, the Kardoes closing was disclosed 18 Oct and is scheduled to be complete by 31 Dec. The move will result in 86 layoffs.

There was no notice of the closing on the Hexpol website, although local papers in the LaFayette area ran stories about it. Hexpol officials could not immediately be reached for comment.

Kardoes Rubber was founded in 1988 by Frank Kardoes, who sold the company to Hexpol in 2014 for $31.8 million (€28 million).

According to the Hexpol Compounding website, the facility has 131 million pounds of annual mixing capacity. 

It produces a wide range of compounds that are MSHA, REACH and NSF compliant that serve the industrial mat, automotive, building and construction, OTR retreading, conveyor and other industrial markets.

Hexpol disclosed ‘ongoing integration and restructuring projects’ in the US following the acquisition of Preferred Compounding on 1 July in its third quarter financial report 24 Oct.

The report noted that the costs incurred during 2019 mainly included "the closing of two production units and Preferred's head office as well as adjustment of overhead organisation." 

Hexpol estimates that the costs related to the restructuring will amount to about $10 million.