Frito-Lay Closing
93 Losing Jobs at North Long Street Facility

BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

Frito-Lay announced Monday the closing of a snack food plant here that employs 93 salaries and hourly workers.

Employees attending a plant meeting at the North Long Street factory received word Monday afternoon that they would be eligible for severance packages, job placement help, and benefits to cover them in their transition to new jobs.

The closing is part of a consolidation that will concentrate more workers at larger plants with more modern technology. Local workers are eligible to seek jobs at other Frito-Lay plants, though that would involve a move to a different town.

"We have a great work force, but this is a leased facility and there is no room to expand here," said Paul Boykas, a spokesman for Frito-Lay, as he sat in an office in the Salisbury plant.

Frito-Lay built new factories in Jonesboro, Ark., and Lynchburg, Va., in 1998, and refurbished a plant in Fayetteville, Tenn., the same year. Boykas said the Lynchburg plant will add 40 jobs to the existing work force of 200, while the Jonesboro plant will add 160 jobs to a factory that now has 200 workers.

Only a few Salisbury Frito-Lay employees remained on the parking lot of the company after Monday's meeting, and they wouldn't talk to the press.

The plant closing will go into effect in March or April, Boykas said. Production here will shift to Lynchburg and another plant in Perry, Ga.

Boykas said the closing was a surprise to local employees. The company had been looking over the past year for ways to modernize and consolidate production, he said. Production will concentrate in the newer and more technologically advanced factories.

Frito-Lay is closing plants in Jackson, Miss., Chamblee, Ga., and Marlborough, Mass., in addition to the plant here.

In all, Boykas said 870 salaried and hourly workers are affected across the four closing sites. With about 400 new jobs opening up in other plants, Boykas said the total work force reduction will be 400 to 450 jobs, or about one percent of the company's national work force of 40,000.

Steve Reinemund, chairman and chief executive officer of Frito-Lay, said the company realizes "the personal implications are significant," and that Frito-Lay will "work hard to treat each individual with the greatest sensitivity and fairness."

Boykas said expansion was not possible at the Salisbury plant, which has been in operation for a quarter of a century.

As recently as last spring, local plant officials sounded confident about the future of Frito-Lay here. Boyce Sherrill, plant technical manager, told the Post at that time that while the plant was "in a confined space," it was one of the company's "top plants as far as cost numbers."

Company officials also said about a third of the factory's employees have been at the plant here since it opened. The plant makes snacks such as Fritos, Cheetos, Tostitos and Santitos, churning out some 30 million pounds of the snacks in a year.