La Seda Shutting Down Plastics Output

Spanish polyethylene terephthalate maker La Seda de Barcelona plans to cut about 300 jobs and capacity for 500,000 metric tons per year of both polyethylene terephthalate resin and purified terephthalic acid. The company says that five PET resin plants in Italy, Portugal, Greece, Spain, and Turkey are "nonstrategic." La Seda also wants to negotiate with its unions and other parties at its San Roque, Spain, plant—which it purchased from Eastman in 2007—to reduce costs or else it "will consider the definitive shutdown of the facility." The company also plans to shut down its Wilton, England, PTA plant because the technology it uses there is obsolete and the company's p-xylene supplier is shutting down.