Kraft Heinz to close 7 factories in US, Canada in downsizing

Wednesday’s news was considerably worse for other cities, including Madison, Wis., where 700 production workers learned that their almost century-old Oscar Mayer plant will close.

Commenting on the results, CEO Bernardo Hees said, “Our third quarter results reflect continued progress as we integrate these two great companies while driving greater accountability, discipline and efficiency”. The Mayer brothers originally bought a Madison meatpacking plant in 1919.

As the seven factories close, Kraft Heinz says it is investing “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”.

“The move centralizes all our USA business units to our co-headquarters of Chicago and Pittsburgh, which will drive increased collaboration and efficiency”, Mr. Mullen said.

“In this case, when you look at seven announcements across the country, it has nothing to do with Wisconsin”, Walker said. “It has everything to do with a corporate decision that was made by the merger of those two companies”.

Kraft Heinz will slash 2,600 jobs nationwide, a wrenching set of cutbacks that will eliminate 130 jobs at a Kraft Foods coffee factory in San Leandro. He insisted the agency didn’t suspect the closure was coming.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report. He didn’t respond when asked whether the company ever offered any benefits.

Defending the loss of one of the state’s best known companies, the GOP governor said that it was a corporate decision that had “nothing to do with Wisconsin” and that Democratic politicians like Madison Mayor Paul Soglin and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi were also caught flat-footed. The company has used the city as its headquarters since 1957.

The Iowa Economic Development Authority Board in a specially called meeting Thursday morning unanimously agreed to award almost $5 million to Kraft Heinz, which plans to close its downtown Davenport meat processing facility and drastically cut jobs there. According to the city, the new plant would be on a 70-acre parcel in the Eastern Iowa Industrial Center, which is located at Northwest Boulevard and Interstate 80. The state of New York pledged $20 million to help the company upgrade three plants in exchange for keeping them open.