Colgate-Palmolive Closing NJ Plant, Laying Off 350

Colgate-Palmolive has announced plans to close its Morristown plant.

The New York-based consumer products company says it will lay off 350 employees and move more than 200 nonmanufacturing workers to its Piscataway technology center.

Layoffs are to start after the middle of next year and be completed in early 2016.  Non-manufacturing employees are to be transferred to the technology center in 2015.

The 60-year-old plant makes liquid hand soap, body wash, antiperspirant and deodorant.

Colgate-Palmolive says production will be shifted to a plant to be built in the southeastern U.S. as part of a modernization and cost-cutting move.

The company announced last year it planned to cut its overall workforce by more than 2,000 workers by 2016 in a push to make the company more efficient.

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