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Print ArticleMARSHALL —Schwan Food Co. has just announced that it will close its pie manufacturing facility in Spartanburg, S.C., just five years after it bought the plant. The plant employs 525 people. Schwan obtained the plant after it bought Mrs. Smith’s, a dessert manufacturing subsidiary of Flowers Food Inc., in 2003.
Company spokesman and senior vice president Bill McCormack notes that work from the Spartanburg plant will be moved to the Schwan dessert plant in Stillwell, OK. “The Stillwell plant has a capacity of 630,000 square feet,” McCormack said. “You can imagine how big that is. There is room for expansion and continue the operations and be more efficient. That is important to us.”
Schwan will continue to operate a dessert plant in the Atlanta, Ga., area as well as the Stillwell plant. According to McCormack, the Spartanburg plant closure is driven by the need to be more efficient and more competitive. “Every company is faced with increased costs,” McCormack notes, referring to increased fuel prices and increases in the ingredients used to manufacture frozen foods.
McCormack says Schwan will likely sell the Spartanburg plant. “We will look for a buyer who can use that type of facility, another food manufacturer.”