The CEO of Saint John’s chamber of commerce says the impending closure of a Scotsburn Ice Cream manufacturing plant is an indicator of the state of the economy.
David Duplisea, CEO of the Saint John Region Chamber of Commerce, said the closure of the 45-year-old plant is not a unique situation.
READ MORE: Scotsburn closing decades-old ice cream factory in Saint John
“With increased input costs and the whole striving to become more efficient from a manufacturing standpoint, there’s a lot of companies that are finding that it’s difficult to stay competitive now with the global context,” he said.
The closure was announced Wednesday and is scheduled for September, although no exact date has been revealed. It will affect 27 full-time and 16 part-time workers.
Many in the area remember the huge popsicle that used to adorn the outside of the structure, so when news of the closure came this week, many were surprised.
The news comes at a time when Saint John’s labour force numbers dropped by 3.1 per cent in January compared to last year, according to Statistics Canada.
“[It] becomes a vacant building, another vacant building,” Councillor Gerry Lowe said. “It’s in my ward. I just hate to see things like this happen.”
Scotsburn Ice Cream CEO Doug Ettinger said both the equipment and the building here were aging.
“The employees did a wonderful job to make the best of a challenging situation, but in today’s competitive environment you need to have better technology and more up-to-date capabilities,” he said.
Lowe said he hopes the workers are either retirement age or mobile enough to seek work elsewhere.
Ettinger said impacted workers can apply for jobs at the company’s other facilities but made no promises.
“We’re going to hope that there will be some positions that will come up they’ll be able to apply for,” he said, adding that “there’s no certainty on that.”
It will be the end of an era for a business that continues to bring back fond memories, Duplisea said.
“We used to go out looking for pop bottles because the corner store would break a popsicle in half and sell us a half a popsicle for a pop bottle,” he said.
Comments