Saputo, the Canada-based dairy major, is to shut another of its manufacturing facilities in the US.
The company will close its site in Lancaster in Wisconsin in the fourth quarter of its 2024 financial year, a three-month period that runs from January to the end of March next year.
Around 100 staff will be affected by the closure. Saputo said they would be given the chance to move to other unnamed facilities.
In August last year, Saputo announced the closure of another plant in the state. The cheese factory in Belmont will shut in the same quarter as the Lancaster site.
Saputo has recently converted a third plant in Wisconsin. The facility in Reedsburg will take on the production carried out in Lancaster.
Lino Saputo, the company’s chair, president and CEO, said the starting up of the Reedsburg site was “another milestone on our journey to strengthen the competitiveness and the long-term performance of our USA cheese network”.
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He added: “The network optimisation initiatives announced today will increase operational efficiency and capacity utilisation in our USA Sector, while further improving our cost structure.”
Saputo, one of the world’s ten largest dairy companies by annual turnover, according to Rabobank, is scheduled to publish its second-quarter financial results next week.
In the first quarter of Saputo’s current financial year, the company’s revenue fell 2.8% to C$4.2bn ($3.05bn).
“Adjusted” EBITDA rose 4.3% to C$362m but Saputo admitted it would not meet a target it had set for that metric by its fiscal 2025 year due to waning consumer demand and continuing “market headwinds”.
In April, Saputo announced plans to sell two factories in Australia to Coles, the country’s second-largest grocer.
However, in September, Australia’s competition regulator pushed back its decision on the deal.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) was due to present its conclusions on 14 September but said it is still gathering feedback from “parties” that had previously voiced concerns over the deal.
