Guy Montag / CC
Saputo will be closing its Saint John processing plant come January of next year.
The dairy company announced the closure on its website Thursday.
Saputo will also be closing a plant in Trenton, Ont., this September.
The company says the current production of both plants will be integrated into other Saputo facilities across Canada.
A total of around 280 employees will be impacted by the closures. 199 of those jobs are in Saint John.
“It’s not a great day for the north end of Saint John,” said New Brunswick’s Labour Minister Trevor Holder.
“This is a sad day for the workers, this is a historic employer, an employer that we’ve had in the community for a long time.”
Holder says he plans on doing everything he can to help the affected employees get back on their feet.
“I will make sure that any and all resources of our department are going to be put in place to work with the employees, to make sure that they have the resources to either get replaced somewhere else, to look at re-training if that’s what we need to do,” he said.
Holder says he also plans on reaching out to Saputo officials to better understand what the closure will mean for Saint John workers, and what timeline can be expected.
“I’ll be reaching out as well to the employees and to the union leadership to let them know the same thing,” he said.
Holder says the company notified his office about the closure Thursday morning. The Department of Agriculture had been made aware of a possible closure earlier this week.
“In the meantime, we’ve been putting things in place to make sure that most importantly, the employees are protected and that they have all the resources they need to help them moving forward,” he said.
The affected employees will be given severance support, and some will be offered jobs at other Saputo locations in Canada.
Saputo says the decision to close the plants is part of the company’s efforts to find efficiencies and decrease costs.
