CB&I to Cut 300 Jobs in Tyler By BRIAN PEARSON, Business Editor   |   Mar 04, 2009

The bleeding of East Texas industrial and manufacturing jobs continued Monday with the announcement that 300 jobs with CB&I would be eliminated this year in Tyler, taking away almost half of the company’s local work force.

The jobs at CB&I’s two fabrication operations will be gone by year’s end, with those employees either losing their jobs or transferring to the company’s Beaumont operations, Woodlands-based spokeswoman Jan Sieving said.

“Because of the volatility of the economy, we are taking the steps to improve efficiency and be more competitive in the current market,” Ms. Sieving said. “Some (of the Tyler) people will be offered jobs. Not all 300 jobs will be moved.”

Industrial fabrication operations are being consolidated in Beaumont due to its proximity to the Gulf of Mexico and ongoing projects in the region, Ms. Sieving said.

“That has deep-water capabilities and the capacity to construct large modules,” Ms. Sieving said, adding that “modules” are chunks of an industrial expansion built at CB&I operations before being moved out to the project site.

The shutdown will not affect the company’s Tyler engineering center, which employs 360, Sieving said.

The 300 lost jobs add to the more than 2,000 industrial and manufacturing positions jettisoned in the past year in the Tyler area.

In January, Trinity Industries in Longview announced that it was cutting almost 300 workers.

The Goodyear plant’s recent closing in Tyler eliminated about 900 jobs. Tyler Pipe, Carrier and Trane in Tyler followed, announcing hundreds of job cuts.

In Longview, the industrial community took a double hit in December with the news that the Dana Corp. plant would lay off up to 250 workers, while Eastman Chemical Co., which has a Longview plant, would be cutting contractors.

“It’s very bad news for the Tyler economy,” Tom Mullins, president and CEO of the Tyler Economic Development Corp., said of the CB&I announcement. “When you consider the 2,000 job cuts we had last year, losing another 300 manufacturing jobs is not good for our local economy.

“Those are very high-paying jobs, and they make a big impact on the economy. I think manufacturing for a while is really going to struggle in this economy.”

Mullins said it is understandable why CB&I would want easy access to deep water, with fabricated units more easily moved by ships than trucks. While bleak times have hit manufacturing, there are bright nonmanufacturing prospects looming on Tyler’s horizon, he said.

“We have a variety of things that could happen this year that could add jobs back,” Mullins said.

CB&I acquired Howe-Baker International in Tyler in 2000 in a $145 million deal including cash, stock and assumed debt, according to the CB&I Web site, www.cbi.com.

The company specializes in the construction of hydrocarbon processing plants for the refining, petrochemical and natural gas industries.

In July 2006, CB&I expanded fabrication operations by acquiring the Beaumont facility. Located on 74 acres near the Port of Beaumont, CB&I’s Island Park shop can ship out modules weighing up to 2,500 tons.

In August 2006, CB&I was awarded a contract by Golden Pass LNG Terminal LLC for work on a $1 billion liquefied natural gas import terminal near Sabine Pass.

The project includes two ship-unloading berths and five LNG storage tanks, each with a capacity of 155,000 cubic meters. The project also includes a regasification system, which was set to start up this year but was postponed due to Hurricane Ike, Sieving said.

The Woodlands-based CB&I is an engineering, procurement and construction company that specializes in industries that produce, process, store and distribute natural resources. It operates about 60 locations and employs about 19,000 people worldwide.

Last month, the company reported a net income of $68.6 million for the fourth quarter of 2008, a 55 percent increase compared with fourth quarter 2007 net income of $44.2 million, according to a company news release.

Net income for all of 2008 was a loss of $21.1 million.