Firm lays off 22 in Island Falls Wastewater facility to be closed

ISLAND FALLS – National Starch and Chemical Co. is closing its wastewater treatment facility and laying off 22 people here after a strategic review of the firm’s global manufacturing capability, company officials said in a brief statement Thursday.

Martin Torbert, spokesman for the Bridgewater, N.J.-based corporation, released the statement via e-mail Thursday afternoon after plant Manager Alan S. Martin confirmed the layoffs and referred comment to him.

Torbert could not be reached for further comment.

The company’s statement did not indicate how its wastewater would be treated.

The company, which makes food-grade starch for processed foods and for industrial products and processes such as papermaking, employs 64 people. The laid-off workers were notified on Wednesday.

The layoff was the second at the company since 2002, when 12 workers were cut. At the time, those layoffs were attributed to continuing slow business conditions. The company was the largest employer in the town of 790 people.

National Starch and Chemical Co. is a member of the ICI Group, a worldwide manufacturer of adhesives, specialty polymers, natural polymers and electronic materials with 2006 sales of $3.7 billion, company officials said.

The Island Falls plant was built in the 1950s by a group of area farmers to make starch from potatoes. Since then, the facility, located on Burleigh Street along the shore of the West Branch of the Mattawamkeag River, has changed hands three times, the latest in 1997 when ICI bought National Starch for $8 million.

In 2006, U.S. District Judge George Z. Singal ruled that National Starch was right to reject a 4,000-bag shipment of tapioca starch from Thailand in 2001 because some of the bags were found to have human feces and crushed glass in them.

Singal awarded the company more than $1.4 million in damages. The company and its insurer, ICHEM Insurance Co. of London, in May 2005 sued Star Shipping AS of Norway and Masterbulk PTE Ltd. of Singapore that owned the cargo ship Star Inventana, the ship on which the bags were shipped from Thailand to Portland.

At the time, National Starch had a 50 percent market share in the U.S. and supplied starch to many large food companies.