A dark gray building full of steel tanks and giant reactors sits at the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Southern Virginia, a hulking symbol of an abandoned effort to make more medical gloves in the US.
With $123 million in financing from the federal government, the factory was to have been the first in the nation in more than 30 years to produce a key ingredient in the gloves used in exam rooms and hospitals across the country. Now, four-and-a-half years after breaking ground, the Blue Star NBR factory may be a month away from being sold for parts.