CHICAGO, Ill. (Reuters) — Monsanto plans to close three research and development centres next year with a loss of 90 jobs.
The move comes as the company restructures operations to cut costs in a slumping agricultural commodity market.
The centres in Middleton, Wisconsin, and Mystic, Connecticut, focus on seed trait development research, while the one in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina, focuses on plant screening and phenotyping.
The company plans to close the Middleton centre in the first half of next year, and the Mystic and Research Triangle Park locations in the second half of the year.
Monsanto, which owns the facilities in Wisconsin and Connecticut, said it is looking for buyers for those properties and for a replacement tenant for its leased property in North Carolina.
Monsanto has 22,500 employees at more than 400 facilities worldwide in more than 60 countries.
It said earlier this month that it planned to cut 2,600 jobs and restructure its operations in a bid to cut costs. These planned overall job cuts would affect 11.6 percent of its regular workforce.
