Norfolk plant closure will cost 570 jobs

A Norfolk plant that has produced contact lenses since the 1950s will close next year, eliminating 570 jobs.

CooperVision Inc. announced the closure yesterday, citing excess manufacturing capacity as the reason for moving production from Norfolk to its plants in Puerto Rico and England over the next 15 months.

The Norfolk plant's work force includes about 65 temporary and 505 full-time employees, said Chuck Rogers, its vice president of operations. Employees will receive severance, and Rogers said the company decided to phase down the operation in part to give employees time to prepare.

CooperVision, a unit of The Cooper Companies Inc. based in Pleasanton, Calif., said it is closing the Norfolk plant because of improvements in manufacturing efficiency at all of its sites.

The company said it has increased manufacturing production over the past year while reducing headcount by about 685 employees. However, because of the economic downturn and slower growth in demand, it now has excess capacity.

"We have done a lot in the plants to improve quality and efficiency and increase capacity," Rogers said. "The industry has been fairly recession-resistant. However, even though CooperVison's business is solid and we are still making gains, because of the downturn in the economy the demand is not growing as fast as we had projected."

By consolidating operations, CooperVision said it expects to save about $14 million a year starting in 2011.

The Norfolk plant makes premium lenses under the Proclear brand. The facility produces about 60 million lenses a year, or about 7 percent of the company's annual production, but Rogers said the plant has less production flexibility than the overseas plants.

Rogers said the plant has made contact lenses since the 1950s, when it opened as Lombart Lenses. It has been through several acquisitions and became part of CooperVision in 2002, Rogers said. The company plans to close the 70,000-square-foot plant by December 2010 and sell the building.

While the loss of more than 500 jobs is a big number, it may not have a significant impact on the Hampton Roads region because it has employment of about 775,000 people, said William F. Mezger, chief economist with the Virginia Employment Commission. "One [layoff] by itself wouldn't do very much," he said.

The Hampton Roads area consistently has some of the lowest large-metropolitan-area unemployment rates in the nation. In June, the latest month available, Hampton Roads had 7.4 percent unemployment, which is the sixth-lowest jobless rate in the nation when comparing metro areas with populations of more than 1 million, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Contact John Reid Blackwell at (804) 775-8123 or .

Staff writer Emily C. Dooley contributed to this report.