Former Oscar Mayer plant to soon be demolished

Demolition of a former Oscar Mayer plant in Davenport, Iowa, will begin soon.

Roy Graber Headshot
Keith Homan | Bigstock
Keith Homan | Bigstock

Demolition of a former Oscar Mayer plant in Davenport, Iowa, will begin soon.

The facility is located on West River Drive, and had been idle since the fall of 2018, reported the Quad City Times, when parent company Kraft Heinz ended operations there. The facility has been a part of Davenport for more than a century, having been built around 1912.

The City of Davenport and Kraft Heinz reached an agreement with a stipulation that the demolition of the building would need to begin within 18 months of the closure. In accordance with that agreement, demolition would need to begin by March 23.

Susanne Knutson, Davenport’s economic development manager, told the Times the building cannot be imploded, but instead will have to be taken down “piece-by-piece.”

Kraft Heinz, which formed in 2015 with the merger of H.J. Heinz Co. and Kraft Foods, announced later that year that it would move its Oscar Mayer and U.S. Meats Business Unit headquarters from Madison, Wisconsin, to Chicago, where Kraft Heinz is headquartered.

At the same time, it announced it would close plants in Fullerton, California; San Leandro, California; Federalsburg, Maryland; St. Marys, Ontario, Canada; Campbell, New York; Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania; and Madison. The company also stated then that it is planning to move production from its existing Davenport facility to a new, state-of-the-art location within the Davenport area.

The diversified Kraft Heinz is the fifth largest food and beverage company in the world. It is also the sixth largest turkey producer in the United States, according to the WATT PoultryUSA Top Companies rankings. In 2019, the company slaughtered 340 million pounds of live turkeys, an increase of about 2.4% when compared to 2018 figures.

The company recently made several changes to its executive team. Miguel Patricio was named Kraft Heinz CEO in April 2019. Later that year, Paulo Basilio was named chief financial officer, Nina Barton was named chief growth officer and Bruno Keller became the new Canada zone president.

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