Chinese company buys equipment at closed plant

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- Equipment idled when Corning Inc. shut down a television picture-tube plant in State College, laying off 1,000 people, is heading for China.
A Chinese company bought the surplus equipment from Corning Asahi Video Products -- hundreds of tons of it -- for $45 million and is having it shipped overseas in cargo containers.
About 60 percent of Corning-Asahi's hourly workers and 80 percent of its salaried employees from the Centre County plant have found new work, according to Rogoski's information.
The factory in College Township -- once the county's second-largest private employer -- closed in June, as demand slowed for the glass tubes it made for television sets and computer monitors. Corning plans to sell or lease the facility after the last of the equipment is moved out. About 150 people are working at the facility packing up equipment, a process expected to stretch through the late summer or early fall, Rogoski said.
Corning does not expect to build any more heavy manufacturing plants in the United States. Instead, its focus has turned to the research and development of flat-screen TV production at a Kentucky plant.