Dean Foods announced this week the production plant in Evart would close in Feb. 2013.
/ Courtesy: City of Evart
EVART -- An Osceola County community is dealing with a new round of job cuts from one of its largest employers and more cuts are looming.
Dean Foods announced this week an additional 54 employees would be losing their jobs from the Liberty Dairy plant in Evart. The new cuts are in addition to the 43 jobs eliminated in early August.
Officials with Dean Foods, which is based in Dallas, tells 7&4 News the cuts are due to one of the company's largest customers no longer using Dean Foods to buy its milk. The customer accounted for 90-percent of the Evart plant's business.
After this current round of layoffs is complete in October and November, the Evart facility will employ approximately 60 people. Dean Foods currently anticipates it can maintain one shift of production volume at the plant until February 2013, the plant will then likely stop production and operate solely as a distribution branch.
“We sincerely regret this difficult decision and the impact it will have on our dedicated employees and the community of Evart,” said Gregg Tanner, President of the company’s Fresh Dairy Direct business and Chief Supply Chain Officer for Dean Foods. “We worked with our customer to delay the totality of the changes until early next year, with the goal of providing our employees as much time as possible to transition into new jobs. By early next year, however, we anticipate it will no longer be economically viable to operate the Evart plant, and we are significantly reducing the plant’s production this year. We are committed to assisting our employees through this transition. We have worked with the union to provide compensation for our represented employees through our bargaining agreements, and will also provide severance benefits for our non-union employees.”
The WARN Act requires companies to give 60 days’ notice of significant job losses that affect more than 50 people at one time if the total impacted is more than one-third of the workforce.
The Liberty Dairy plant in Evart opened in 1934 and has been part of Dean Foods for more than 40 years. At one point it employed nearly 200 people.
