BIDDEFORD (AP) – The Biddeford Blankets manufacturing plant will cease production in the next 60 days, putting 200 people out of work and marking another blow for the state’s reeling manufacturing sector.

Microlife Corp., the Taiwan-based owner of Biddeford Blankets, announced Wednesday that it is closing the plant because it has been losing money and is not competitive with overseas competition. The company said it also had difficulty obtaining financing for the plant and maintaining a stable work force.

The decision comes a year and a half after Microlife bought bankrupt Biddeford Textile Corp. for $5.8 million and renamed it Biddeford Blankets.

Microlife is a medical equipment company and makes the temperature-control devices for Biddeford Blankets’ electric blankets.

“Any time jobs are lost, particularly manufacturing jobs, it presents some exceptional challenges to the community,” said Robert Dodge, Biddeford economic and community development director.

State Economist Laurie Lachance said news of the closure is troubling, but not shocking given the state of the manufacturing sector.

From July 2000 until this August, Maine lost 17,800 manufacturing jobs, or 22.1 percent of its manufacturing base, the highest proportion of any state. More than 2.7 million manufacturing jobs were lost nationwide in the same period, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“These are the older, mature industries,” Lachance said. “They are under increasingly fierce competition that has evolved, particularly over the last 10 or 15 years…New plants are being built around the world and filled by very low-cost labor, and are in environments where there are very few regulations, frequently.”

Some employees were told Wednesday was their last day of work, while others were told they would be working until Nov. 21. The company will maintain a warehouse and distribution center in Biddeford that will employ 35 to 40 people.

Helen Vincent, 55, a spinner, said she’d already put her name in for jobs at International Baking Co. and Westpoint Stevens. She and her husband moved to Biddeford from Quebec in 1968 to work in the textile mills and would have reached their 30th anniversary with Biddeford Blankets in March 2004.

Spinner Marie Cote, 60, of Dayton, said she’s unsure what she will do to earn a living after 31 years with the company. She never earned a high school diploma, and is unsure whether retraining programs can help her find a job.

“If you don’t have an education today, it’s very hard to find a job,” she said.

Still, the closing of the plant is not as severe a blow to the local economy as it once might have been.

Forty to 50 years ago, textile jobs accounted for 90 percent of local jobs, Dodge said. The local economy is more diverse today, with Southern Maine Medical Center and the University of New England contributing about 1,500 jobs, he said.

AP-ES-10-16-03 1435EDT