Associated Press Published

Flint Group Pigments to Close West Virginia Plant

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  Flint Group Pigments is shuttering a West Virginia manufacturing facility because of a decline in demand for a dye used in printing ink.

The Herald-Dispatch reports about 50 people will lose their jobs when the Huntington plant closes. The company says the facility is exclusively dedicated to making alkali blue, a pigment used in magazine and book printing.

Ken Horton, the company’s vice president and general manager of pigments, chips and resins, says there has been a steep worldwide decline in demand because of the “changing face of communications.”

The plant first opened in 1912 and was operated by several successive companies until Flint Group Pigments bought it in 2005.

The company plans to keep operating the plant for the next months until the raw material inventory runs out.