La Veneciana: Closure Of Madrid Plant

Saint-Gobain has announced the closure of the Villaverde (Madrid) facility of its Spanish flat glass processing subsidiary La Veneciana. Company managers say the plant has been loss-making for the past decade while workers claim that the group is closing the plant in order to sell the site for a high price. The company and the works committee are in talks on a solution for the 56 employees, 29 of whom are over 52 years old. Relocation in nearby centres and early retirement are among the options according to union UGT and Saint-Gobain Group in Spain. The facility made a loss of EUR 1.5M in 2005. UGT puts the real estate value of the site at EUR 89.3M.