Smithfield to leave Newport News warehouse, affecting 39 workers
NEWPORT NEWS — Smithfield Foods will close its distribution center in Newport News on Dec. 31 as it aims to streamline the path its products take from farms to shoppers, affecting 39 workers there.
The company said it decided not to renew its lease at 121 Harwood Drive, and the closure was “part of broader plan to optimize the company’s national distribution network.”
In its 2018 sustainability plan, Smithfield said it planned to reduce the number of redundant miles its trucks drive. It used the example of pork bellies harvested in Tar Heel, N.C., shipped to Milwaukee to become bacon and then driven back to be sold in stores. To fix that, the company said it would shrink the number of distribution centers and opt, instead, for four hubs in strategic geographies: Maryland, North Carolina, Kansas and Indiana.
For now, workers have been offered transfers to a new facility in Maryland, north of Baltimore, but the United Food and Commercial Workers union is working to obtain other options for its members, possibly including severance, according to UFCW Local 400 spokesman Jonathan
Williams.
The company said that in addition to trying to find employees jobs at its other facilities, it’s working with the Virginia Employment Commission and Virginia Career Works to match them with other local employers.