Oscar Mayer's historic Madison plant to close; Chicago lands headquarters

Andrew Poole

06:25 | Tuesday, Nov 17, 2015

"We did not reach out, or engage in conversations with, officials in Wisconsin prior to the announcement, as the decision to close Madison was based entirely on the need to reduce operational redundancies and eliminate excess capacity within our North American network", Mullen wrote. The company, which is run by Brazilian private-equity firm 3G Capital Partners LP, is aiming to save $1.5 billion in the first few years of the merger.

- When the two biggest names in packaged foods - Kraft and Heinz - merged a few months ago, cuts were widely expected.

Mullen said it was a "difficult but necessary" decision.

"It's one of those where you'll have to ask people like Mr. Buffett and others whose company engineered this decision because it's not something they even made contact with us [on]", Walker said.

The cuts are in addition to the 2,500 workers in the region the company announced it would let go in August.

"The impact on Madison and the metro area has got to be in the hundreds of millions of dollars", said Soglin.

"It's been around longer than I have", Risser, 88, said.

"We are glad that Davenport, Iowa, was able to successfully compete for a new, state-of-the-art manufacturing facility that will certainly position it for future growth", Debi Durham, director of the Iowa Economic Development Authority, said in a statement.

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