By Dawn Gagnon and Darren Fishell
BDN Staff Writers
BANGOR — Garelick Farms is consolidating its operations and will close distribution facilities for its dairy products in Caribou and Hermon, a corporate spokesman said recently.
Product distribution in Maine will be contracted through a third-party distributor, according to Jamaison Schuler, spokesman for Garelick’s Texas-based parent company, Dean Foods. He declined to identify the new distributer.
“We regret the impact that this decision will have on our employees and our communities,” he said.
“The decision to eliminate jobs in any part of our business is never an easy one,” Schuler said. “The decision to discontinue distribution in these locations does not reflect the quality of work performed by our employees but the competitive nature of the marketplace.”
Schuler said that 30 employees — 26 of them working at Garelick Farms facility in Hermon and another four working in Caribou — will be affected by the consolidation and that the new distributor indicated that it intends to hire most of them.
“Impacted employees will still receive a severance even if they are employed again by the new company,” he said, adding that the transition likely will be completed in early October.
“Obviously, it’s never good to lose jobs, but I’m glad to hear that most of them will be rehired,” Caribou City Manager Austin Bleess said Sept. 3.
Julie Rabinowitz, spokesman for the Department of Labor, said that a representative from the department was working to set up a meeting with affected Garelick workers but had not set a date.
Ellis Additon, director of the Bureau of Agriculture Food and Rural Resources, said the announcement of the closure was unlikely to have any impact on dairy farmers.
“Those two facilities are simply drop-off points,” Additon said. “They bring the milk in there and pool it onto bigger trucks and send it off to be processed, and we don’t see it having an impact on the producers and farmers.”
Additon said he hasn’t heard from any producers directly about the announcement.
The distribution facilities in Hermon and Caribou are not the first to be closed by Dean Foods. In October 2012, the company announced plans to close its production facility in Bangor, effective in January of 2013. It cited competitive pressures as the reason for that shutdown, which resulted in the layoff of 35 employees.
The Bangor facility predominantly produced fluid milk, Schuler said at that time. Its production capacity was shifted to the company’s three remaining production plants in Franklin; Lynn, Mass.; and Rensselaer, N.Y.
