Air Products closing Pennsylvania plant, idling 75 workers

Air Products is closing a northeastern Pennsylvania plant after more than 60 years, idling the 75 workers that remain there effective Aug. 1.

Company spokesman Art George blames the closing on a decline in global orders.

Air Products bought the site in Hanover Township, near Wilkes-Barre, in 1954 and opened the plant a year later. Workers there build heat exchangers, which are tanks up to 180 feet long that cool natural gas as it comes out of the ground so it can be liquefied and shipped abroad.

The company still has a plant in Port Manatee, Florida, which is closer to the seaport needed to ship the exchangers overseas.

George says it took five days for exchangers made in Hanover Township to move by train to Philadelphia where they'd be shipped out.