Veeco plans to keep its company headquarters in Plainview. (Credit: newsday / Thomas A. Ferrara)

Veeco Instruments Inc., which makes tools to manufacture light-emitting diodes, hard drives and chips for wireless devices, is relocating about 65 New York State manufacturing jobs, including 18 on Long Island, to a facility in Somerset, New Jersey, the company announced.

A spokesman said Monday that Veeco’s headquarters and nonmanufacturing jobs related to marketing, engineering, finance and sales in its advanced deposition and etch (AD&E) unit would remain in Plainview. The company plans to move most of the 18 AD&E manufacturing jobs from Plainview to Somerset by the end of the first quarter of 2017, he said.

The company currently employs about 700 people overall, including roughly 150 at the company-owned site in Plainview. The company also has manufacturing facilities in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Horsham, Pennsylvania.

Veeco is realigning its manufacturing to save money and to meet increased demand for customized tools, the spokesman said.

“By combining these manufacturing teams under one roof, we have the agility to better balance our resources across those businesses and maintain our ability to ramp up if we need to,” he said.
Shares of Veeco rose 12 cents to close at $17.54 on Monday. They are down 14.7 percent year to date.
About 33 manufacturing jobs will be moved from the Kingston site, which is scheduled to be closed in the first quarter of 2017, and 15 from the Poughkeepsie site, which is expected to be shuttered in the fourth quarter of 2016.

Veeco has said that revenue declines in several recent quarters stem from slack demand for tools to make LEDs among Asian manufacturers.