The new owner of Emporia’s Safeway pet food plant said there will be some layoffs while 27-year-old equipment at the plant is replaced.
Ron Haws, the chief financial officer for American Nutrition, said the plant would come back up to its full workforce as quickly as possible after the new equipment is installed. He did not specify how many jobs would be affected.
“We’re trying to minimize the effects as much as possible,” Haws said. “It’s a transition. They’ll be laid off as Safeway employees and be rehired as ANI.”
American Nutrition will take possession of the Emporia plant March 31, which will be the first opportunity for the company’s engineers to see what needs to be done and how long it will probably take. Haws said that more than $1 million will probably be invested in the plant.
Once it is reopened, the Emporia plant will be the easternmost point of operations for the Utah-based pet food company. That makes it a valuable connection for the company, Haws said.
“We’re a fairly large regional pet food producer in the West,” Haws said. “But we’ve grown and the grocery business has consolidated. There’s not a lot of regional grocery stores anymore. They’ve gone national. Emporia is a bright spot on our national footprint.”
American Nutrition has its headquarters in Ogden, Utah, where 50 percent of its products are produced. The rest come from subsidiaries in Phoenix, Ariz. and Woodland, Wash. The company also has sales offices in California and in Washington state.
The company was founded in 1972 as Animal Nutrition by former Kellogg employee Jack Behnken. It now produces more than 290,000 tons of pet foods and snacks per year.
“People love their pets and we do, too,” Haws said. “Nationally, the growth rate is about 3 percent for the industry.”
Safeway opened the Emporia plant in 1980. At the time it was at a central location for the nationwide company, but these days, most of the chain’s 1,767 stores are on the West Coast.
Employees at the Safeway plant (formally Emporia Pet Food) were told of the sale last week.
“They were all pretty excited about being part of a larger organization instead of a little orphan child trying to hang on,” Haws said.
Haws said that American Nutrition hopes to double the plant’s production capacity, but added that that’s probably a few years down the road.