Refrigeration system manufacturer Hussman Corp. has decided to close its Gloversville facility and ship its work to Mexico.

The Bridgeton, Mo.-based company, whose refrigeration food cases appear in supermarkets and convenience stores worldwide, notified its Gloversville employees Wednesday about the plant closure.

The shutdown, which will be completed during the second half of 2009, follows Hussman’s decision to reduce its independent distributor product offerings. That work accounted for half of the Gloversville plant’s manufacturing activities.

“As a matter of sound business practice, and also in response to unprecedented economic and marketplace challenges, we are refining business models throughout our enterprises,” said Ronald Jakubec, Hussman’s plant manager in Gloversville.

The plant’s shutdown will affect 90 workers, which is much lower than the 140 people the facility employed in 1990, when it was owned by the Whitman Corp. of Chicago. Jakubec noted that the plant has been limping along, operating at 40 percent equipment capacity and 20 percent assembly capacity — production levels that are “not sustainable and unlikely to increase in the foreseeable future.”

Hussman was acquired by Montvale, N.J.-based Ingersoll Rand Co. in 2000. It is transferring the Gloversville plant’s workload to an existing facility in Monterrey, Mexico.

The layoffs will likely push up Fulton County’s unemployment rate, which took a hit after Carlsbad, Calif.-based Callaway Golf Co. closed its Gloversville plant, which employed 118. Their work was shipped to China. By October, Fulton County’s unemployment rate was 6.8 percent.

The Hussman facility on East State Street is located next to a former vinyl record printing plant closed in 2005 by Universal Music, eliminating 112 jobs.