IAN Kerr showed up for work at the Glencore coke works in Bowen last Wednesday as he had done for the last 37 years.

The day didn't progress much further before Glencore made the announcement that 18 workers would soon be out of work.

"They called us all up form the work site and got us into the office… Greg Ashe the Glencore Australia General Manager was there and he said he wasn't going to sugar-coat anything and they will be closing the coke works," he said.

"Everybody was sort of stunned and not sure what was going to happen to us."

Mr Kerr, an operator and maintainer of the coke ovens, said Glencore cited the current economic climate as the reason for the closure of their Bowen operation.

"He (Mr Ashe) said that it's not viable (for Glencore) to get coal from Newlands or Oaky Creek anymore. The cost of railing coal to Bowen and the cost of getting the coke out to the Isa is just too just too much for them."

Last year the company trialled importing coke from China as a fuel for the Glencore smelting operations in Mt Isa.

Mr Kerr said he expected this to continue and the remaining 25, 000 tons of coke that remained at the Glencore site in Bowen would be trucked to Mt Isa.

Mr Kerr has been offered work at the Glencore smelter in Mt Isa but he said he wasn't interested in a move west.

"You have got two weeks to decide if you want to work there or take your redundancy."

Though Mr Kerr said Glencore is "looking after" workers - by offering fair redundancy packages in accordance with the Employment Partnership Agreement - the closure of the coke making plant is a bitter pill to swallow.

"It's sort of sad…we got one young fella down there, he is a third generation young fella from Bowen and now it has finished up for him too. It's another nail in the coffin for Bowen I suppose."

Mr Kerr said he believed the expansion of Glencore from a commodity trader into mining and smelting was the reason for the failure of the Bowen coke works.

"I don't think they can run them really well. They should have just stuck to what they know," he said.

The Glencore coke works was built in 1933 and originally sourced coal from the mines in Collinsville and later another Glencore operation, the Newland mine north of Bowen.

One worker will be kept on to oversee the transit of the existing coke stock pile.