Tyson Foods plans to close a pair of facilities and sell another as part of “strategic changes to its beef operations,” the company said Thursday.
The Arkansas-based meat producer intends to shutter a beef plant in Northwest Illinois and a packaging site outside Salt Lake City, and said that it is attempting to sell its beef plant in southern Washington state, as well.
The decisions would reportedly result in about 2,500 layoffs at the Joslin, Illinois, plant and over 700 job cuts in Eagle Mountain, Utah.
Tyson officials said that the company hopes to establish “a more competitive footprint amidst one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced.” Three of its facilities in the central U.S. — in Dakota City, Nebraska, Holcomb, Kansas, and Amarillo, Texas — would anchor the company’s beef operations moving forward. The company expects to add a second shift in Amarillo “as cattle become available.”
“Collectively, these changes will allow the company to maintain a similar level of cattle harvesting across a more efficient and modern network,” company officials said in the announcement.
The company said that it “recognizes the impact these decisions have on team members and communities,” and that it would assist affected workers in applying for open positions at other Tyson facilities.
The closures follow Tyson’s shuttering of another Nebraska beef plant earlier this year; that decision alone resulted in about 3,200 layoffs.
