Cargill’s announcement of job cuts in Lititz in October 2015 reached further than the Broad Street plant at the center of the news, a company spokesman confirmed to LititzDailyNews.com.
Earlier that day, Oct. 29, 2015, Cargill confirmed before 9 a.m. that it would eliminate 130 jobs in Lititz, most of them at the Broad Street chocolate plant beside Lititz Springs Park. LititzDailyNews.com was first to report the cuts.
Lincoln Avenue workers
Later that day, Cargill spokesman Pete Stoddard said employees at the company’s West Lincoln Avenue plant could also be touched by the changes.
“There will be the same number of jobs there, but there will be individuals who are impacted,” Stoddard said. “The net number of jobs at that facility won’t be impacted.”
In other words, the Lincoln Avenue operation was expected to keep the same headcount, but some people working there could see their positions change or end as the company reorganized.
Not about ADM, Cargill says
The cuts came only months after Cargill acquired the global chocolate business of Archer Daniels Midland, a deal LititzDailyNews.com had covered that summer. Many residents assumed the two were linked.
Stoddard rejected that framing. “No, that’s not an accurate way to say it,” he said. “To say that this is a cause and effect of ADM, no. We expanded our footprint in North America and this is one of the outcomes of it. When we acquired ADM we acquired additional plants.”
The distinction he drew was that the acquisition gave Cargill more production capacity across North America, and the company then decided how to use all of its plants together. Lititz’s Broad Street site was one of the outcomes of that review.
Leadership moving north
The changes also reached the Cargill office building next to Lititz Springs Park, which housed leadership for the cocoa and chocolate business.
“Most of them will be moved to Minneapolis or Milwaukee,” Stoddard said, referring to locations closer to Cargill’s corporate headquarters in Minnesota. Most were expected to arrive by early January 2016. “It’s in the process,” he said.
Timeline for the plant closing
Stoddard said the Broad Street plant was expected to close in mid-January 2016. Employees being laid off would receive notice 60 days before the closing, as required under federal law.
“The WARN notice has to be filed 60 days before closure of the plant,” he said, referring to the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which requires larger employers to give advance notice of mass layoffs and plant closings.
A blow to a chocolate town
Lititz has been associated with chocolate for more than a century, and the Broad Street plant was a familiar part of the borough’s identity. The smell of cocoa drifting over the park was something many residents grew up with.
The 2015 announcement came as the town’s chocolate heritage was already in flux. Wilbur Chocolate, another name long linked to Lititz, was part of the Cargill operation at the time, and residents were anxious about what consolidation would mean for jobs, for the downtown and for the landmark buildings.
What it meant for workers
For the 130 employees losing their jobs, the 60-day notice period offered limited time to find new work before the holidays. State and county workforce programs typically step in after WARN filings to help with job searches and retraining, and local employers in the food and manufacturing sectors were watching to see whether experienced workers would be available.
For the Lincoln Avenue staff, the message was mixed: the plant itself was not shrinking, but individual roles could still change.
This story was originally reported by Lynn Rebuck for LititzDailyNews.com in October 2015 and has been updated for our archive.