Procter & Gamble has announced that is closing a manufacturing plant based in Puerto Rico and will be laying off 230 employees.

The plant, located in Cavey, a southern town on the Carribean island, has been manufacturing Olay skin care products since Procter & Gamble purchased the site in 1985.

Yet Procter & Gamble now plans for its plant in North Carolina to take over the Puerto Rico site’s manufacturing operations.

The process is expected to be complete within the next nine to 12 months.

It is part of a restructuring program in which the company plans to streamline it manufacturing operations by using a smaller number of large, high performance plants.

Procter & Gamble currently has 29 plants in North America but is planning to reduce the figure further.

The closure of Procter & Gamble’s Puerto Rico plant comes as a blow to the country’s government, which has been running incentive schemes for manufacturers in recent years in an effort to diversity its manufacturing sector and boost the national economy.