Diamond Foods Inc. and Procter & Gamble Co. have called off their $1.5 billion deal for Diamond to buy the Pringles brand. Cereal maker Kellogg Co. is swooping and made a $2.7 billion deal to purchase the brand.Lincoln Foodservice Products Inc. notified the state Thursday that it plans to cut 190 Fort Wayne employees.
The maker of restaurant equipment and other food-service products is selling its Smallware Division and the likely purchaser will move that production elsewhere, said Dennis Rooney, director of human resources for Lincoln Foodservice parent company Manitowoc Co.
The cuts will begin Feb. 1, Lincoln Foodservice said in its notice to the Indiana Department of Workforce Development. They'll be complete by June or July, Rooney said.
About 100 production workers, members of Local 237 of the Sheet Metal Workers International Association, will receive a severance package that's being negotiated between Lincoln Foodservice and the union, Rooney said.
The 90 other workers, salaried employees, will get Manitowoc's standard involuntary separation package – a formula based on salary and years of service, Rooney said.
The workers losing jobs can apply for other positions in Manitowoc's operations making cranes and food-service products.
"But both are experiencing pretty lean times," Rooney said.
Production workers at Lincoln Foodservice earn about $18 an hour. Rooney declined to disclose the pay of the salaried workers.
An estimated 50 to 70 employees will still make conveyor ovens at the 358,000-square-foot plant at 1111 N. Hadley Road.
"That's for certain through 2010," Rooney said, adding, however, that he doesn't know whether Manitowoc would add production at the plant or eventually close it.
Corporate officials traveled to Fort Wayne on Wednesday to notify Lincoln Foodservice workers of the cuts. In August, the company announced it was putting the Smallwares Division up for sale and said the operation might be moved.
Rooney said a confidentiality agreement prohibits him from naming the likely buyer of the Smallwares Division. He said he doesn't know where the division will be moved.
Manitowoc, based in Manitowoc, Wis., bought Lincoln Foodservice from Enodis PLC in October 2008.
Manitowoc shares fell 42 cents to $9.45 at the close of trading Thursday on the New York Stock Exchange.
Tuesday's news brings the number of announced job cuts in northeast Indiana and northwest Ohio to 424 since the beginning of October. The Journal Gazette learned of plans for 586 new jobs during the same period.
John Stafford, director of the Community Research Institute at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, last month predicted that announcements of new jobs followed by announcements of cuts would typify the economic recovery over the coming year.
Indiana's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.8 percent in October. Ohio's was 10.5 percent. The U.S. rate was 10.2 percent.
