Over 500 people in Olean are losing their jobs and a company founded in Bradford over 140 years ago is disappearing today.
Today is the last day for plant workers at the Dresser-Rand facility. Dresser-Rand’s parent company, German-owned Siemens, has been in the process of moving operations from Olean to other locations for four years.
After today, only office workers will be employed in the company’s sprawling complex on Wayne Street.
The company’s history dates back to 1880, when Solomon Dresser started selling equipment to oil companies in Bradford. Dresser’s company merged with Olean-based Clark Brothers in 1938. You can read a brief biography of Dresser here.
Dresser-Clark merged with Ingersoll-Rand in 1986 to form Dresser-Rand, and Halliburton acquired 51% of the company in 2004.
Siemens purchased the company in 2015 for $7.6 billion in cash. In June of 2018, Siemens announced plans to shut down Dresser-Rand, an operation which comes to its fruition today.