LEEDS – Safety-Kleen, an industrial and hazardous waste handler, has closed its facility on Route 202 to consolidate its New England operations.

“We’re trying to be very lean and efficient,” said John Kyte, spokesman for the Plano, Texas-based company. “We acquired a facility in Newington, N.H., and there were redundancies.”

Several employees were affected, Kyte said. Three people accepted transfers within the company; two others are still working for Safety-Kleen, but not from a local office, and three others declined offers to transfer. A part-time temporary worker was laid off.

Kyte said Safety-Kleen will work with state regulatory authorities to make sure the closure of the facility meets all environmental and safety requirements. It’s been operating in Leeds since 1982.

“This is a highly regulated industry and we will be working with the appropriate state agencies in closing down the facility,” Kyte said. Service to its 1,700 Maine clients will be handled from other Safety-Kleen facilities in New Hampshire and Salisbury, Mass.

Safety-Kleen is licensed by the Maine Department of Environmental Protection as a transfer/storage/disposal facility for hazardous waste, although it functions primarily as a storage-transfer facility, said Joan Jones, an environmental specialist with DEP.

The company collects materials like dry cleaning solvents, degreasing materials from automotive industries and other industrial wastes. It also gathers universal waste such as old computer monitors and fluorescent light bulbs.

Most of the waste was trucked out of the facility on a weekly basis. For instance, Jones said spent or waste solvents collected from Maine companies was put into bulk storage on site at Leeds, then transferred to tanker trucks for shipment to New Jersey for further refining.

She said the efficiency that Safety-Kleen used in collecting and disposing of waste was laudable. It is in compliance with DEP regulations.

“It’s very sad news for us,” said Jones of the closure, noting the uncertainty of having similar services provided by an out-of-state facility.

As part of its DEP licensing application, Safety-Kleen had to file a plan detailing how the facilities will be cleaned in the event of a closure. Any remaining waste at the site must be removed, then structures like the buildings, floors and pipes decontaminated.

The plan estimates $200,000 to close the facility, but Jones said that’s based on the model of a company abandoning a facility and the state having to hire a third party to do the remediation work.

“I expect they can do that work for less themselves,” Jones said.

The state agency was formally notified Monday that the Leeds facility closed Friday.

Safety-Kleen filed documents with the Securities and Exchange Commission in May, serving notice of its intent to go public. The company did not disclose the size or price range of its initial public offering, but did reveal that the offering price may total $300 million.

Kyte said the decision to close the Leeds operation was independent of activities preparing Safety-Kleen for its IPO. When it acquired Advanced Liquid Recycling – based in Meriden, Conn., with a facility in Newington, N.H. – in December 2007, that created the redundancies. Once the Leeds site is closed and remediated, it will likely be put up for sale, Kyte said.

The company is North America’s largest collector, recycler and refiner of used oil, as well as the largest provider of parts cleaning services. It has more than 200 facilities in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The company filed for bankruptcy in 2000 after a failed merger with Laidlaw Environmental in the mid-’90s. In 2006, it reported a loss of $73 million. In 2007, Safety-Kleen reported a profit of $4.5 million.