December 11, 2024
Tyson Foods to close Philadelphia, US beef plants, lay off 229 workers
Tyson Foods has announced plans to shut down two beef production plants in Philadelphia, US, resulting in 229 job losses.
The closures are scheduled to take effect on January 31, 2025.
The company filed a notice about the layoffs with the Pennsylvania Department of Labour and Industry in November. The affected facilities include a cooked food plant at 4001 N American Street and a raw processing plant at 520 E Huntington Park Avenue.
Requests for comment from Tyson Foods went unanswered. In addition to the closures in Philadelphia, the Arkansas-based company is laying off 809 employees at its facility in Emporia, Kansas.
The decision comes amid financial challenges in Tyson's beef production segment. The company informed investors earlier this month that it anticipates a loss of US$200 million to US$400 million in beef production, attributing the downturn to a shrinking cattle supply.
According to projections from the US Department of Agriculture, domestic beef production is expected to decline by approximately 2% in 2025. Meanwhile, Tyson has indicated that pork and chicken production are set to rise by 2% during the same period, which could boost income by US$100 million to US$200 million for pork and by US$1 billion to US$1.2 billion for chicken.
These closures follow other recent actions by Tyson Foods. Earlier this year, the company permanently shut down a plant in Iowa, impacting nearly 1,300 workers, and sold a poultry processing complex in Georgia to House of Raeford Farms.
- Lancaster Farming
