As one chapter opens in General Electric’s long Massachusetts history, another closes.
As GE prepares to relocate its corporate headquarters to Boston this summer, the Connecticut company is completing another big move: the transfer of valve manufacturing work from Avon to a new plant in Florida.
GE spokeswoman Susan Bishop said the company has listed its 136,000-square-foot valve plant at 85 Bodwell St. for sale. The manufacturing work there stopped earlier this week, although some employees remain to help with the closure of the site, she said.
About 300 people were affected by the plant closure, Bishop said.
The long-anticipated layoffs in Avon occurred in phases, and displaced employees were offered severance pay and job placement assistance, Bishop said.
Some were offered opportunities to transfer to Florida, some are applying for other jobs within GE, and some are moving to GE’s engineering center in Randolph, Bishop said. About 80 people will work for GE in that office, she said.
GE informed workers in early 2015 that the operations in Avon and Pineville, La., would be transferred to a new plant in Jacksonville, Fla. The company acquired the Avon plant, which made Masoneilan-brand valves, through its purchase of Dresser Inc. in 2011.
Henry Pires, president of the United Auto Workers, Local 470, said GE held the last round of layoffs involving workers from his union a week ago.
“Close to 60 union members were laid off last Friday,” Pires said. “It was emotional. There were tears shed, hugs, a lot of hugging.”
Pires said only a handful of employees made the move to Florida. Roughly several dozen workers remain to close down the factory, he said, but he expects everyone to be gone by mid-summer.
“There were a few that went to other GE plants, and everybody else is looking for work,” said Pires, a stock clerk who will be on the job for another week, helping GE pack equipment.
He said GE provided severance of one week of pay for each year of service to displaced workers, with a maximum of 12 weeks of pay.
Valves made at the plant have been used in everything from oil pipelines in Alaska to a system used by NASA to cool the space shuttle launchpad.
“Valves were used all over the world,” said Pires, who has worked there 29 years. “It’s sad to see it go.”
Meanwhile, GE is adding hundreds of jobs in the state in two other locations: the new corporate headquarters planned for Boston’s Fort Point section, and the new US headquarters of its Healthcare Life Sciences business in Marlborough.
GE will be moving executives to Fort Point in August, and will employ as many as 800 people there by the end of 2018. And the company expects to employ as many as 500 in Marlborough over that same time frame.
Jon Chesto can be reached at jon.chesto@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @jonchesto.