GORHAM – A tire plant in Gorham is closing, putting 61 employees out of work.

Maine Industrial Tire, with corporate offices in Wakefield, Mass., manufactures off-road tires in its plant on Laurence Drive in the Gorham Industrial Park.

“Yes, it’s closing,” Matthew Turnell, company spokesman, said Monday about its Gorham facility.

Turnell said employees were notified about the closing in a company meeting in its Gorham plant on Jan. 6. The company has hired a Portland firm to assist workers to find new jobs.

“It is always disappointing when any employee is laid off from employment,” Gorham Town Manager David Cole said Tuesday. “This has been a difficult economy for the past several years and business is continuing to struggle.”

The company, which manufactures solid tires for industrial equipment like forklifts, said in a statement it is restructuring its global business operations. The company has plants in Red Lion, Penn., and Xingtai, China.

Turnell anticipated the consolidation process would take six months, but the Gorham plant could close by spring. However, the company did not release a specific date.

Turnell said the decision impacting its Gorham operations came in December following a “long, arduous process.”

The company cited a reduction in both manufacturing costs and operating expenses as the reason for shuffling its manufacturing from Gorham to its other facilities.

“We are consolidating our manufacturing platform,” Turnell said.

Tom Ellsworth, director of Gorham’s Economic Development Corp., said Tuesday that he was disappointed to learn of the closing, but is optimistic about future use of the facility.

“I’m confident another tenant can be found for that building,” Ellsworth said.

Besides the lost jobs and its impact in area economy, the plant’s closing is a blow to the Gorham tax base. “It’s dismal news, that’s for sure,” Gorham tax assessor Mike D’Arcangelo said Tuesday.

The Gorham plant, at 9 Laurence Drive, close to Route 25, is in a building owned by Grondin Properties, LLC, according to Gorham tax information. The 47,000-square-foot plant on 5.3 acres was built in 1988.

D’Arcangelo said the personal property taxable value for Maine Industrial Tire equipment is close to $1.8 million, representing $28,222 in taxes for the year ending June 30, 2011. The taxes have been paid.

D’Arcangelo said the town receives another $12,014 from the state based on $1,079,500 in exempted equipment value.

The land and buildings generate an additional $29,904 in annual real estate taxes based on an assessed valuation of nearly $1.9 million.

Ellsworth lauded the area’s labor force and the site’s proximity to the transportation corridor as features attractive to other tenants.

“It’s good, clean manufacturing space in an excellent location,” Ellsworth said. “My goal is to get that building occupied again.”

Turnell said the company has offered severance to workers and several employees were offered relocation positions or other significant roles with the company. It has also hired Career Management Associates in Portland to help its employees find jobs. Turnell said Career Management would be at the plant weekly until it closes.

“They provide outplacement services such as resume writing, job coaching, job interview skills. They also have a network that they work with to help displaced workers in finding jobs,” Turnell said.

David Ciullo, president of Career Management Associates, said Tuesday Maine Industrial Tire is providing its employees three months of comprehensive outplacement services, which include seminars and state-of-the-art online job searches.

Ciullo said it is assisting employees on both of the two shifts at the tire plant. Ciullo said his outplacement services provide workers with the tools they need to help find jobs. Ciullo said there are skills associated with the specialty of production at the Gorham plant that do transfer to other jobs.

“A loss of 61 jobs at anytime is not what we like to see for sure,” Glenn Mills, director of economic research at the Maine Department of Labor, said this week.

According to online statistics posted by the Maine Department of Labor, the latest unemployment rate in Maine was 7.3 percent for November, slightly down from 7.4 percent in October.

In Maine for November, a total of 50,800 workers were unemployed in the state, 6,200 less than a year ago. Mills said December figures wouldn’t be available until later this month.

“We’re seeing a pick-up in the job market,” Ciullo said.

Tire manufacturing at the plant in Gorham had its roots in Westbrook. In 2006, GPX International Tire Corp. bought the former Maine Rubber International that had relocated to Gorham in July 1999 from 942 Main St., in Westbrook.

“We’ve been a fixture there for a long time,” Turnell said about the Gorham plant.

GPX International Tire Corp. in 2009 filed in Boston for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. bankruptcy code. GPX at that time cited “crippling” duties against its China plant by the U.S. Department of Commerce as one reason that led to its Chapter 11 filing.

According to its website, Maine Industrial Tire LLC was formed in January 2010 when a private group of investors and existing senior management purchased the solid tire assets and Starbright Manufacturing facility in China from the restructuring and subsequent resale of GPX International Tire Corp.

Maine Industrial Tire is also reorganizing its sales force. The company now employs more than 850 workers worldwide.