Snack manufacturer Utz Brands Inc. has announced several facility-related moves it is making to reduce cost and support long-term volume growth, including the divestiture of its Bluffton, Ind., plant and the announcement that it will shut down its Carlisle Street Plant in Hanover, Pa., in Q1 of 2024.
Additionally, Utz has decided to list for sale its Louisiana and Alabama processing facilities, and signed a built-to-suit agreement for a new, leased, approximately 650,000-square-foot distribution center in Hanover. All these moves combined are expected to create a more efficient and flexible network to support the Utz’s growth and better serve its customers, the release stated.
Utz’s Bluffton plant, which makes products associated with the TGIF brand and some of Utz’s kettle chip brands, was sold to Super-Pufft Snacks USA Inc., and a co-manufacturing agreement was reached to continue production of some of those products until Utz can shift production to its own facilities in the future.
The Carlisle Street Plant is the company’s oldest plant and served as a kettle chip manufacturing plant, the company said. But Utz has expanded kettle chip manufacturing across its network of plants and also has future kettle production planned for its Kings Mountain, N.C., plant, which it acquired in April 2022. Therefore, Carlisle Street will close, but the company says no job losses will occur due to the closure.
Utz’s Alabama plant was closed in June 2023 and will be sold, as will the Louisiana plant, which suffered irreparable damage from Hurricane Ida in 2021 and has sat idle since that storm. On the flip side, Utz expects to open the new distribution center in Hanover in the first quarter of 2025.
