After a battle 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 shall 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 Battle. The protracted battle to proceed BTL’s exercise has now ended with a sense of bitterness and heartache for a lot of the staff.
The battle has been waged by the Histadrut Basic Federation of Labor for greater than 4 years. At the start 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 yr after the Wertheimers accomplished the sale of of its holdings in Iscar to Warren Buffett. The deal was value $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 battle. “In the long run, you possibly can’t power an enormous like Pratt & Whitney to function the plant in Nahariya in opposition to its will. That is why it selected to cut back manufacturing in Israel and shut Nahariya.”
The supply says that about 600 staff “will retire or take early retirement, and those that do not will obtain elevated compensation. The collective settlement reached with Pratt & Whitney shall be carried out.”
The remaining 300 staff 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 necessary plant in Israel has closed. A plant that employed a number of staff. It hurts as a result of what you produce in business in Israel at this time (blades) – you will not have the ability to make them tomorrow. And the State of Israel has already been within the midst of an embargo. So it is the state’s downside. However sadly the (former) ministers of economic system and protection have 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.
