Union fears Riverbend Foods will shutter North Side soup plant
Riverbend Foods, which makes private-label soups, baby food and other items in a former H.J. Heinz plant on the North Side, has placed more than half of its workers on temporary layoff and a union official fears the facility is preparing to close.
Riverbend, operated by private equity firm Insight Equity of Southlake, Texas, recently sold its main soup production line at the plant, said Tony Helfer, western division director of the United Food and Commercial Workers Local 23, which represents more than 400 workers at the North Side facility.
Production has been reduced from three shifts to one shift per day that requires about 150 workers, he said.
The company could not be reached for comment.
“It’s very frustrating,” Mr. Helfer said. “They are refusing to give us any information.”
This isn’t the first time workers have been worried about the future of the factory.
In March 2018, Riverbend threatened to shutter the facility and filed a possible plant closure notice with the state Department of Labor and Industry.
It withdrew the warning in April 2018, saying, “We are very optimistic that together with the UFCW, we’re going to be able to increase our sales opportunities and grow this business.”
That statement came after the company and union settled a contract dispute and a new threeyear pact that eliminated health care for current and future retirees went into effect.
The plant employs a total of approximately 500, including nonunion workers.
Its products are sold to grocery stores including Walmart, Kroger and Giant Eagle, though Mr. Helfer believes it has not supplied some of those customers in recent months.
Insight Equity purchased the 625,000-square-foot plant in May 2017, and in early 2018 company
management told the PostGazette that it had spent about $14 million to upgrade the facility and equipment.
According to its website, Insight Equity aims to invest in “asset-intensive, middle market companies underperforming or striving to achieve their full potential.”
Insight bought the business from TreeHouse Foods, which did not disclose the sale price but said it generated $216 million in revenue in 2016.
TreeHouse bought it in 2006 from DelMonte Foods, which had acquired it from Pittsburgh-based Heinz in 2002.
Heinz, which has since merged with Kraft Foods to become Kraft Heinz, opened the facility in 1888.
When Riverbend informed workers of a temporary layoff a couple of months ago, Mr. Helfer said, “They gave them hope it would be short.”
Now union employees — some of whom worked there when Heinz owned it — are not sure whether to seek other jobs or wait for possible severance pay if the plant closes, he said.
“They are holding them in limbo, and it’s wrong,” he said.
Some workers told him that real estate agents have toured the facility, and there is speculation it will be converted to residential units like other nearby buildings along the Allegheny River once operated by Heinz.
“The writing on the wall is that Riverbend is closing it,” Mr. Helfer said. “They just won’t say it.”