Borden Closing 2 Plants : 300 Jobs Over 90 Days Will Be Eliminated at Scudder Anaheim Plant

One month after Borden bit into the California munchies market by buying Laura Scudder’s, the snack-food giant has announced that it will shut down production at the Anaheim plant that produces peanut butter and potato chips and lay off 300 workers there.

Laura Scudder’s administrative offices and distribution center will remain in Anaheim, Borden spokeswoman Chris Tilton said Friday, but production of the full snack line there will be phased out over the next three months, with most manufacturing activity moving to Borden plants in Albuquerque, N.M., Kaysville, Utah, and Tracy, San Joaquin County.

When Borden bought Scudder’s for an estimated $100 million on Sept. 22, Borden spokesman Nicholas R. Iammartino said that plans for Scudder’s were “business as usual.” So Friday’s announcement came as a surprise to most Anaheim-based Scudder’s employees.

“What we’ve discovered is that we will be very more than able to continue the snacks production formerly at Anaheim at our other nearby snack-food plants,” Tilton said. “Our facilities--especially in Albuquerque and Kaysville--are much more modern and up to date.”

Scudder’s makes tortilla and potato chips, nuts, cheese curls, popcorn, dry dip mixes, caramel corn and peanut butter at the Anaheim plant, Tilton said. The plant employs 632 people, including production workers, administrative personnel and distribution and warehouse workers. It has been in operation since 1960.

A bowl of potato chips sits on a table in the visitors’ lobby, and a portrait of company founder Laura Scudder adorns one wall.

An additional 286 Scudder’s employees work at the Tracy facility, and about 300 more are employed at sales and distribution centers throughout Scudder’s territory of California, Arizona and Nevada.

Scudder’s is the second-largest snack-food company in the three-state area, ranking behind Frito-Lay, and controls a “high-teens market share” in the lucrative California snack market, said food industry analyst William Maguire of Merrill Lynch Research in New York.

Supervisors at Scudder’s broke the news of the layoff to small groups of workers in Anaheim shortly before noon Friday.

“There are a lot of unhappy people in there,” said one female visitor as she left the Anaheim plant shortly after the announcement.

“These are people you see in the cafeteria all the time, and it’s kind of sad,” said a female accounting department employee who has worked for the company for 25 years. The woman, who asked that her name not be used, said the accounting group won’t be affected by the layoff.

George R. Kuper, a Borden vice president in charge of the Anaheim facility, said the company wanted to move manufacturing to its more modern plants that have excess production capacity. “We will now be able to retain a more consistently high quality level.”

Kuper said the company is seeking the help of Orange County government agencies to help find jobs for the displaced workers. “We’re also writing letters to every major food manufacturer in the area in hope of finding jobs for as many people as possible,” he said.

Kuper said Friday afternoon that he has already been contacted by a Fullerton citrus processing company that has offered to place 10 Scudder employees.

There are several dozen food products firms in north Orange County, including Hunt-Wesson, Bridgford Foods, Alex Brands, Case-Swayne and divisions of Nabisco Brands, Kraft Foods and Claussen Pickle Co.

The first layoffs at Scudder’s will begin Nov. 13, Tilton said, when 150 employees will lose their jobs. The remaining 150 will be phased out by the end of January, Tilton said.