San Juan, Jan 18 (EFE).San Juan, Jan 18 (EFE). — The Kmart store in Vega Baja, a city located about 30 kilometers (some 19 miles) east of San Juan, Puerto Rico, is closing at the end of April after operating for 25 years, a spokesman for the discount retailer said.
“This is a corporate decision that was made as part of the closings that started in the United States in 2014 to reduce costs and accelerate the company’s transformation,” Kmart’s spokesman in Puerto Rico, Dexter Cosmo, said.
The discount retailer plans to close nearly 200 stores in the United States, but Cosmo said the other 22 Kmarts and 10 Sears stores on the island would remain open.
Hoffman Estates, Illinoisbased Sears Holdings Corporation owns both Kmart and Sears.
A goingoutofbusiness sale will start at the Vega Baja Kmart on Feb. 8 to clear as much merchandise as possible before the doors close and the 206 people employed at the store, the majority of them parttime workers, are let go, Cosmo said.
Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis AG, meanwhile, said it planned to close its Puerto Rican plant, which employs 270 people and opened in 1975.
The plant’s closing will be carried out in stages over four years, Novartis said in a statement.
The plant, which is located in the eastern city of Humacao, is being closed as part of a corporate restructuring, with some of its production being shifted to a plant in Nebraska. EFE
