After a wrestle lasting a number of years, US aerospace producer Pratt & Whitney has lastly determined to close down the BTL (previously Blades Know-how Iscar) plant in Nahariya. The plant has 900 staff of whom 600 will lose their jobs and 300 can be transferred to the manufacturing traces of the same plant in Tefen.
The plant was based in 1968 by Stef Wertheimer after the then French President Charles de Gaulle imposed an arms embargo on Israel following the Six Day Struggle. The protracted wrestle to proceed BTL’s exercise has now ended with a sense of bitterness and heartache for a lot of the employees.
The wrestle has been waged by the Histadrut Common Federation of Labor for greater than 4 years. In the beginning of 2025, a one-year extension was obtained delaying closure of the plant. In actuality, the extension has lasted 18 months.
Pratt & Whitney acquired the plant in 2014 from the Wertheimer household for an undisclosed quantity, a 12 months after the Wertheimers accomplished the sale of of its holdings in Iscar to Warren Buffett. The deal was price $6 billion (in two levels).
“There have been strikes, and arguments in Knesset committees and the manufacturing unit yard,” says a supply accustomed to the main points of the wrestle. “Ultimately, you’ll be able to’t power a large like Pratt & Whitney to function the plant in Nahariya in opposition to its will. That is why it selected to scale back manufacturing in Israel and shut Nahariya.”
The supply says that about 600 employees “will retire or take early retirement, and those that do not will obtain elevated compensation. The collective settlement reached with Pratt & Whitney can be applied.”
The remaining 300 employees who’re supposed to maneuver to US firm’s extra plant in Tefen will work on a manufacturing line for manufacturing blades for jet engines “that produces virtually the identical factor,” he says. He provides, “The good ache is that an vital plant in Israel has closed. A plant that employed quite a lot of employees. It hurts as a result of what you produce in business in Israel right now (blades) – you will not be capable of make them tomorrow. And the State of Israel has already been within the midst of an embargo. So it is the state’s drawback. However sadly the (former) ministers of financial system and protection had been unable to persuade the Individuals to maintain the plant.”
Printed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on June 16, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
Printed by Globes, Israel enterprise information – en.globes.co.il – on June 16, 2026.
© Copyright of Globes Writer Itonut (1983) Ltd., 2026.
