UPDATE: TheCityWire.com editor Michael Tilley talks to Baldor CEO John McFarland. He disputes the Reuters report and others who said that Baldor will cut 900 jobs. McFarland says that the workforce will be reduced through attrition.
“Since July 1, as people retire or quit, we don’t replace them,” he explained. “We haven’t had a layoff in Fort Smith since 1961. ... And we don’t expect to have a layoff through this recession either. We just don’t have layoffs.”
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And there is this tough reminder, too. Though we’ve known for months that they wouldn’t rebuild in Booneville, it looks like Cargill has found a plant in Nebraska to relocate its operations that were destroyed by fire.
More than 800 jobs were lost in Booneville when that March 2008 fire consumed most of the 150,000 sq. ft. meat processing facility. Cargill officials said in May they would not rebuild the plant, citing that it would take too long — 15 to 22 months — to get a new plant up and running.
Michael Tilley with TheCityWire.com has this coverage.
An analysis by the University of Arkansas Center for Business and Economic Research in Fayetteville estimated the payroll loss at $18.3 million, with the loss of 800 jobs having a potential multiplier affect of 1,806 jobs lost in Logan County.
Cargill has purchased a Carneco Foods plant in Columbus, Neb., to house the operations once conducted in Booneville, according to a Dec. 14 report in the Columbus Telegram.
The newspaper report noted: “Cargill Value Added Meats, a division of Cargill Inc., had been seeking a new operations facility following the destruction of its Booneville, Ark., plant by fire on Easter Sunday. Cargill was approached by Lopez Foods Inc., owner of Carneco, to purchase the Columbus facility, according to John O’Carroll, president of Cargill Value Added Meats.”
Despite what Cargill officials told the people of Booneville when explaining why they would not rebuild in Booneville, a Cargill official is quoted in the Columbus Telegram as saying the company had planned to build a new plant in Texas.
“We had planned to build a plant in Texas,” O’Carroll said, but instead Cargill chose to take advantage of a “beautiful plant in a great state that is pro-business with a tremendous workforce.”
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