The MSA manufacturing plant in Evans City, which has 125 employees, will close in two years.The closing is part of a restructuring plan announced Tuesday by the company, which makes safety products for the workplace and home, as well as emergency and military personnel.

PITTSBURGH — The MSA manufacturing plant in Evans City will close in two years as part of a restructuring plan announced Tuesday by the company.

The plant's 125 employees could find jobs with other MSA operations, but that decision won't be made until later this year, said Mark Deasy, MSA's director of public relations and strategic communications.

The company's Project Magellan is a restructuring of its North American operations with the goal of saving $10 million in operating costs by the end of the project in three to four years.

MSA makes a myriad of safety products for the workplace and home, as well as for emergency and military personnel. The Evans City facility makes gas masks and other respiratory protection products.

MSA will close the plant when the company's property lease is up in August 2009.

Deasy said MSA sold its Callery Chemical/Mars-Evans City Road facility to BASF, based in Mount Olive, N.J., about four years ago and then leased its 146,400-square-foot plant from BASF.

In an effort to reduce operating costs, MSA surveyed its 12 North American facilities for unused space and found it was not using about 60,000 square feet of the Evans City plant.

"So it makes sense for us to give up that space when our lease expires in 2009 and to move those operations into other facilities," Deasy said.

Where the gas mask-respiratory protection devices will be made is yet to be determined, he said.

As for the Evans City workers, some could find a home in the company's Cranberry Township manufacturing/research and development facility or at the Murrysville, Westmoreland County, facility. Or they could be offered jobs in other North American facilities, including Mexico, where the company is moving operations from two sites in Mexico to a new factory being built there.

The third phase of the project finds MSA moving manufacturing operations from Mexico City and Torreon to a new factory at Queretaro, about 130 miles northwest of Mexico City, from the second half of 2007 into 2008. The two existing plants together employ about 100 workers.

The only other complete plant closing scheduled is the one in Clifton, N.J., that makes fire helmets. That operation is moving to MSA's plant in Jacksonville, N.C., by the end of 2008. Clifton has 70 employees.

MSA has 2,300 employees in North America and a total of 4,500 employees worldwide.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.