SGL plans layoffs at other facilities
SGL Carbon's Moses Lake carbon fiber plant.
Charles H. Featherstone
By CHARLES H. FEATHERSTONE
Staff Writer
WIESBADEN, Germany — Citing a fall in demand for carbon fiber, SGL Carbon announced last week it is laying off “more than 500 employees” worldwide.
According to Raj Juninger, SGL’s head of capital markets and communication, more than half of those layoffs will be in Germany, with the rest spread across the company’s offices and production facilities across the world.
“In our Moses Lake facility in Washington state, we had already reduced 5 employees before August 2020,” Juninger wrote in an email to the Columbia Basin Herald. “No further employee reductions are planned in Moses Lake.”
According to a company press release issued at the end of October, the layoffs will cost the company 40 million euros ($46.7 million) and will be part of a 100 million euro ($117 million) “impairment loss” the company will report as part of its fourth quarter 2020 earnings.
In the same press release, SGL noted that carbon fiber demand for components in aerospace and automobile production was down in 2020 — in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic — while demand for carbon fiber to make parts for wind power generation “is growing much stronger than previously planned.”
At its Moses Lake facility, SGL Carbon run a Japanese-made polymer through a lengthy series of ovens and chemical treatments to create a strong carbon fiber thread, which is then woven into sheets and pressed together with an epoxy glue to create panels that are cut and stamped into parts, like fenders and rotor blades. The company was started as a joint venture with BMW, which uses carbon fiber components extensively in several of its models, including i3 and i8.
SGL, which is publicly traded on Germany’s Börse Frankfurt, finished Tuesday’s trading day at 2.69 euros ($3.15) per share, down 1.7 percent. The price of the company’s stock has fallen nearly 30 percent since early August, when it traded at 3.80 euros ($4.45) per share.
Charles H. Featherstone can be reached at cfeatherstone@columbiabasinherald.com.