Valencia, Spain -- Polyurethane foams specialist Recticel has announced plans to shut down a Spanish foam production facility in La Eliana near Valencia.
The plan is to move the production capacities to nearby Catarroja, where Recticel has another manufacturing site. The company said 16 jobs will be cut as part of the closure, alongside a further 12 job losses within the IPF engineering department of its subsidiary Recticel, Iberica.
Although the company announced a small increase in automotive sales during the third quarter, the general trend reflected downward sliding revenues for the period against last year, with a 2.7% drop to EUR 308m ($423.3m). The Q3 results followed slides in both of the year's first two quarters of 9.5% and 4.4% respectively.
Thus, in the first nine months of 2013, the company recorded revenues of EUR 940m – a 5.6% reduction against the same period in the previous year.
On the bright side, the company saw its business in bedding was up 2.7%, flexible foams was down 1.5% and insulation with a 0.5 reduction barely remained stable. In contrast, the automotive segment shrank 13.6% against the same period in 2012.
The company's management said it will continue restructuring activities for the remaining weeks of 2013.
