LITCHFIELD -- About 130 Innovex employees in Litchfield will be laid off in phases starting in April, according to the company's director of United States operations.
Innovex announced last month that it will be moving its manufacturing operations to one of its plants in Thailand. How that would affect the more than 200 jobs at the plant was not determined at the time.
The Litchfield plant will still be used for product development. The company will retain about 40 employees for it, according to numbers from Steve Samways, Innovex director of United States operations.
The company also is selling its etched metal manufacturing business, which employs about 30 people. Whether those jobs remain will depend on the buyer, Samways said.
Layoffs will start April 30 and the company expects to stop all manufacturing work in Litchfield by next year, Samways said. The company plans to sell three of its four buildings.
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Moving the manufacturing work to Thailand is expected to save the company $8 million annually. Cost savings and customer demand were the main reasons for the change. Innovex's costs are about 10 percent higher than several of its competitors, many of which manufacture their products in Asia already, Samways said last month.
Having all manufacturing in Thailand also will shorten the production process by about a week. Customers were demanding a shorter time between placing an order and receiving the product, Samways has said.
The manufacturing will move to a new plant in Lamphun, Thailand, which was built while the company phased out manufacturing at its Maple Plain facility in 2004 and moved those jobs to Thailand and Litchfield.
Innovex makes high-density flexible circuits that are used in data storage devices such as hard disc drives, tape drives and flat panel displays.
