Elliott Group to close Rostraver facility, impacting 40 jobs

Elliott Group is permanently closing its center in Rostraver, which employed about 40 people, the company announced Thursday.

“The decision to close our Belle Vernon facility was a difficult but necessary step to sustain Elliott’s auxiliary products portfolio while reducing the fixed costs associated with maintaining a separate, stand-alone operation,” CEO Michael Lordi said in a statement.

Some employees will be laid off, while others will be moved to the company’s main operation in Jeannette.

Elliott Group laid off 17 employees from the Rostraver center last month. The layoffs were announced as a temporary measure brought on by the collapse oil and gas prices caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

These 17 employees are included in the total count of 40 affected by the closure, according to the company.

Current and former employees said the facility was struggling long before coronavirus. New jobs slowed to a crawl, and the company began outsourcing much of the work formerly done by the Rostraver workers.

“The work was getting really bad, and they had been sending out work to somewhere in New Jersey,” said Phil Abbott, a former Elliott employee who was among those laid off last month. “We were just doing nothing for a couple weeks.”

The company will phase out operations in Rostraver over the next few weeks as existing orders are completed.

The Rostraver center opened in 2009. It manufactures and installs auxiliary systems — like pipes, pumps and lubricators — for the compressors, turbines and other machines manufactured at the Jeannette headquarters.

These operations will move to Jeannette.

The company rents the Rostraver facility, and has notified the owner it will be vacated by the end of the year.

Elliott Group is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Tokyo-based Ebara Corp. It manufactures compressors and turbines for oil and gas, refining, petrochecmical and industrial uses and cryogenic pumps and expanders for liquefied gas plants.

Elliott Group is building a cryogenic pump test stand at the former Jeannette Glass site that is expected to add about 130 jobs to the company’s workforce in the city.