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ROBINSON TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) – Not that long ago, Pittsburgh was the American headquarters for the German-based Bayer Corporation, with over 2,600 employees working at its campus off Parkway West.

On Tuesday morning, Bayer told its remaining employees there its presence in Robinson is about to end.

“Today we made the very difficult announcing that we are closing our Robinson facility,” Chris Loder, Bayer’s vice president of external communications, told KDKA.

“And this is a difficult day for our employees and their families given the proud history that Robinson has played not just in Bayer’s history but in the entire region.”

Loder said that just under 600 employees and 100 contract workers will lose their jobs in Robinson over the next two years.

“We are committed to treating everybody who is affected by this with dignity and respect in this entire process,” said Loder.

So does that mean that these employees will have another job at Bayer?

“Well, right now we are still obviously exploring options of where this work will happen, but we are closing this site,” Loder said. “I want people to understand that this site is being closed down.”

The work at Robinson was primarily administrative support – IT, payroll, accounting, HR and legal.

As for the site itself, Bayer is exploring options with Covestro, a spin-off company that took over Bayer’s material science work in 2015 and still remains along Parkway West.

As for the work of the Bayer Foundation, also based in Pittsburgh, the company insists, “the commitments that we have made to the non-profit organizations and the charitable organizations in the Pittsburgh region will remain at the same levels in 2019 and 2020.”

Bayer is not completely exiting the region.

Some 1,300 employees still remain in Indianola, Saxonburg, and O’Hara as part of the radiology operations of the company’s pharmaceuticals division, Loder said.

The company has released a statement to the media about the closure, reading: