Corning Inc. will scale back production, cut another 4,000 jobs and close its optical fiber plant in Deeside, North Wales. The company plans to expand its restructuring plan, including taking a $1 billion charge in 2001 as a result.

Corning will cut an additional 4,000 jobs through layoffs and voluntary early retirement, for a total of 12,000 in 2001, it says. Its workforce peaked at 43,000 earlier this year.

The restructuring also calls for Corning to close and consolidate other manufacturing locations, as well as smaller businesses in the tlecom and advanced materials segments, it says in a statement. The closures are in addition to previously announced ones.

Corning says it will record a $1 billion charge in the second half of 2001, with about $350 million of that in the third quarter. Two third of the charges will be noncash, it says. The company’s capital expenditures will fall to $1.8 billion this year, with a goal of lowering capital spending to less than $1 billion next year.

Citing a weak demand for optical fiber, Corning says it will continue low-level operations at the Deeside plant through 2001, but will lay off 436 employees. It acquired the plant in November 1998. The Deeside operation is one of five optical fiber manufacturing plants worldwide, Corning says. Others are in Wilmington and Concord, N.C.; Neustadt Bei Coburg, Germany; and Noble Park, Victoria, Australia.