Photo: WFIU News Staff
The Terra Haute plant will be absorbing about half of the jobs lost due to a closure in New Jersey
Earlier this month, Sony announced it would close its CD plant in Pitman, New Jersey leaving 300 people unemployed. About 150 of those jobs are expected to move to a factory in Terre Haute. By April, the southern Indiana facility will be the only U.S. compact disc manufacturing plant east of the Mississippi River.
The Terre Haute factory now employs 1,150 workers. Mayor Duke Bennett said he is hopeful that the increase in jobs will help the local economy.
“It’s a major component in our overall economic development picture. So, any kind of an announcement like this that increases jobs obviously has a pretty big positive effect,” Bennett said.
Bennett said this is good news, especially after the closing of the Pfizer Plant in 2008, which resulted in the loss of more than 700 jobs; a set back Bennett said Terra Haute has yet to recover from.
