PolyOne to close Wichita plant

An Ohio-based polymers manufacturer will lay off 74 employees and close its South Tyler plant, which has ties to Wichita that are more than half a century old.

The PolyOne Corp. plant at 1444 S. Tyler Road will wind down operations “over the next several months as we transition production to other existing PolyOne facilities,” spokesman Kyle Rose said in an e-mail Friday to The Eagle.

“The difficult but necessary decision was made to better utilize our production capacity and operate more efficiently across our full manufacturing footprint,” Rose said.

He said PolyOne is providing transition benefits and assistance to employees.

PolyOne picked up the Wichita plant as part of its 2013 acquisition of Clayton, Mo.-based Spartech.

In 2011, the city of Wichita and Sedgwick County each approved $15,000 in forgivable loans to Spartech, which planned to expand the 63,000-square-foot plant by adding 35,400 square feet of warehouse space and 18 jobs, and investing about $7.5 million in new machinery and equipment.

Spartech bought the plant in 1994 from Pawnee Plastics, which was founded in Wichita in 1964.

PolyOne has 52 manufacturing facilities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. It also operates plants in China and Brazil.

This story was originally published February 5, 2016 at 3:20 PM with the headline "PolyOne to close Wichita plant."