Rolls-Royce North America has announced plans to close its aircraft portion production plant in Prince George’s County, Virginia, until mid-2021.
The closure, which will eliminate 280 jobs, is due to a decline in activity amid the COVID-19 crisis, corporate spokesman Donald Campbell said Saturday.
“The COVID-19 pandemic has caused a historic civil aviation collapse, which will take several years to recover,” Campbell said in the statement. “As a result, we have had to make complicated but mandatory decisions for the long term of our company.”
Employees reported the resolution on Friday.
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The Rolls-Royce Crosspointe plant, on 1,000 acres off Interstate 295 in Prince George, manufactures gadgets for the British company. The company’s North American operations are located in Northern Virginia.
The Prince George’s plant opened in 2011 and has basically produced what the company calls “rotating” engines or jet engines.
Three years later, in 2014, a production plant was opened at the time and guilty of production turbine shovels and nozzle steering blades. The blades direct the airflow over the turbine blades while converting the deformation power into kinetic energy, spinning the turbine at maximum speed.
Rolls-Royce is the first production facility in the Virginia region and the fourth Tri-City company to announce its closure due to the coronavirus pandemic.
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