ITHACA, N.Y. –– The new year has brought with it some bad news for the employees of one local company – STgenetics (Inguran LLC d/b/a Sexing Technologies), a contracted business affiliate of Genex Cooperative Inc., has announced plans to close its Ithaca-Tompkins County facility by the end of June.
The company has had a presence in Ithaca since 1938, and currently staff work out of a facility at 522 Sheffield Road just over the town of Ithaca line in the town of Enfield. According to Cornell, the facility employed as many as 60 people in recent years. There appears to be no Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) on file with the state of New York, which would have been triggered if staff levels were 50 or more at the time of the announcement (in which case, a layoff of more than 25 would have required a WARN filing). A business affiliate speaking on background suggests the current staff level is between 25 and 30, with most of the local staff being laboratory technicians.
In a company-wide email obtained by the Voice, a letter attributed to STgenetics Human Resources Manager Clayton Robinson and dated January 5th states “(d)ue to business changes from our partner URUS/GENEX, it is anticipated that the STgenetics Ithaca Sexed Sorting Lab will shut down operations at the end of June 2021.”
Staff are being offered retention bonuses should they choose to stick it out until the end of June, and the company is offering relocation incentives to staff who wish to transfer to sister facilities in Wisconsin, Ohio and Texas. Inquiry calls and emails placed by The Ithaca Voice with the company’s main office and human resources office were not returned.
More generally described as an animal husbandry technology firm, Texas-based STgenetics is a provider of livestock reproductive services with the production of quality-assured semen, embryos, and live cattle. The company’s services include bovine semen collection, in vitro fertilization, embryo collection and transfer, enabling dairy farmers and beef cattle ranchers the ability to determine the gender of the offspring. The firm employs roughly 1,200 staff worldwide.