Maple Leaf investing $395 million in Hamilton
Maple Leaf Foods is planning to build a new $395 million processing plant at the Red Hill Industrial Park on the south-east Mountain.
Construction will begin next year on the plant that will make sliced deli meats and hot dogs and is expected to emit minimal odour.
The new facility is slated to be completed in 2014 and employ 670 people.
The move is being touted by city economic development officials, who have been working on the project since January, as one of the largest, if not the single largest private sector investment in the history of Hamilton.
It is also the largest food industry investment in Canada.
The new plant will be built next door to the Maple Leaf-owned Canada Bread facility that recently opened at the industrial park.
Maple Leaf is also building three other new plants across the country and closing several other operations including plants and distribution centres in east Hamilton, Burlington and Kitchener as part of a $560 million modernization plan.
The existing plants will all be closed: Burlington, Hamilton and Kitchener. MLF are investing 560 million into a state of the art facility in South Hamilton's Industrial Area. Hopefully existing employees will be part of the new look MLFs.
RIM will recover, I don't know what it will look like, but they will recover. I empathize with those in the KW area as I've had family, friends and neighbours all lose jobs, homes and relationships over the last decade. In Hamilton, it's health sciences, education, new technologies, smaller manufacturing operations such as MLF and Canada Bread. Arcellor Mittel has flourished. People need to start accepting change because there is going to be alot more in the future.
I had read a business article that claimed Kitchener (1) Hamilton (2) will boom from 2010-2015 that doesn't mean there won't be losses just changes. Hamilton has had a rough turn of the century and should accept that manufacturing of steel isn't steel town's ecomonic base just as Kitchener shouldn't simply rely on RIM.
One point that the great business minds of terb routinely make is streamlining. Well MLFs is streamlining and from this, there will be future growth and expansion, just remember the job for life scenario is no more.