Another day, another piece of bad news for the California economy.
The state was already reeling from the loss of several factories throughout this past year…
Not to mention the wipeout of a whole swath of farms thanks to a local refinery shutting down…
Of course, you can add ICE raids to the mix, as if Californians needed more trouble right now…
And unfortunately, in the next month California’s set to lose…not one, but two more factories.
The first is the Pactiv Evergreen plant in Bakersfield, which is closing by October 14th, at the cost of 127 jobs.
Pactiv was recently acquired by Novolex, and unfortunately the combination comes at a tough time for the food packaging industry (which both operate in).
Given all the negative pressures on the food industry as a whole – increasing input costs, tariff confusion, foreign boycotts of US goods, and of course the pullback in spending as US consumers become more concerned that a recession might be just around the corner…
It’s not shocking that the overall declines in the food industry have rippled out to food packaging, as well.
Declining demand means they need to trim production, and unfortunately that’s the cold, hard logic of this shutdown.
And at the end of October, the Bay State Milling factory in Woodland will shut down, at the cost of another 35 good manufacturing jobs.
(Bay State Milling makes lots of niche ingredients – think chickpea flour and rice flour – so don’t be surprised if you’ve never heard of them before.)
That’s two more plants gone at a time when California really could have used some good news.
After all – far too many businesses are leaving the state or closing up shop altogether.
Here’s hoping that someone can figure out how to turn this all around.
If you have any great ideas, please share them in the comments.
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