Kraft Heinz announced Wednesday that it would be closing seven factories and cutting about 2,600 jobs.
The closing factories are in Fullerton, California; San Leandro, California; Federalsburg, Maryland; St. Marys, Ontario, Canada; Campbell, New York; Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania; and Madison, Wisconsin, Michael Mullen SVP of corporate and government affairs, said in a statement.
Over the next 12-24 months, he said, production in those locations will shift to other existing factories in North America.
He said the decision to close the factories came after “an extensive review of the Kraft Heinz North American supply chain footprint, capabilities and capacity utilization.”
Calling the move “difficult but necessary,” Mullen said the closures would cut approximately 2,600 positions from the company’s North American factory-based employee population.
The company said it also will close its meat processing plant in Davenport, Iowa, and move production to a new facility that will be built nearby.
Kraft Heinz will invest “hundreds of millions of dollars in improving capacity utilization and modernizing many of our facilities with the installation of state-of-the-art production lines,” Mullen added in his statement.
Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway owns about 26.8 percent of shares outstanding in the company, according to the latest available data.
Kraft Heinz formed from the merger of Kraft and Heinz this year. The new company, co-headquartered in Chicago and Pittsburgh, announced in August that 2,500 non-factory jobs would be cut following the merger.
Source: CNBC
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