GTA losing 380 manufacturing jobs

'A truly sad day': Campbell shutting down Toronto soup plant, cutting 380 manufacturing jobs

The Campbell Soup Company's longtime Toronto manufacturing plant will close down within the next 18 months.

The soup giant says it will move its headquarters to a new location in the Greater Toronto Area after the closure, but 380 of the company's current 600 jobs will be "impacted."

"The decision to stop producing soup and broth in Canada was a difficult one," said Campbell executive Mark Alexander. "After a thorough review, we decided this was the best course of action for our business."

The company says the Toronto closure is necessary to improve its operational efficiency, citing a challenging retail environment that has seen volume declines of canned soup in North America.

Campbell says several factors have resulted in excess capacity in its North American supply chain network, and that due to its size and age the Toronto plant cannot be retrofitted in a way that is competitively viable.

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The company says soup and broth production at the Toronto facility will be moved in phases over the next 18 months to three plants in North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.

Campbell says it will move its current Canadian headquarters and commercial operations at the Toronto facility to a new location in the Greater Toronto Area, which will feature a new food innovation centre.

It says about 200 jobs out of the nearly 600 positions at the Toronto facility will be relocated to the new headquarters.

(CBC)

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