Sunny Delight closing Littleton plant
Littleton is facing the shutdown of a bottling plant that will take with it than 60 jobs and $400,000 in revenue from the water it uses, as Sunny Delight Beverage Co. plans to close its 16.5-acre facility on Harvard Road.
The Ohio-based beverage maker said only two of the plant’s 63 employees will be transferred to other positions elsewhere in the company, according to spokeswoman Sydney McHugh. The remaining employees, who were informed of the potential closure in November of last year, may apply for other jobs within the company, she said. Otherwise, the employees will receive severance packages.
Production at the plant, which bottles Fruit 2O and Veryfine fruit juices, is being transferred to other facilities, McHugh said.
“The beverage industry is a very competitive industry. (The closure) will enable us to hold our costs down and meet our consumer needs,” she said.
The plant closure will also affect Littleton’s water department. The plant uses approximately $400,000 worth of water a year, said Scott Edwards, general manager for the water department, which has already cut a position and postponed capital projects in anticipation of the revenue loss.
“The full burden is not going to be passed along. We have cut some expenses,” he said.
Edwards has also been able to sell more water to residential customers this summer, while otherwise there would have been water restrictions, in anticipation of the lowered demand from Sunny Delight. In the next few years, he said, there are a number of large residential and retail projects – including a new hotel and a concrete batching plant – that will come online and offset the loss of the bottle packaging facility.
The plant had been using less water in recent years, he said.
“The outlook looks pretty good as far as picking up the slack,” Edwards said, explaining that, ideally, another bottler would come in and at least use part of the facility. The company is actively marketing the site, McHugh said. The most recent site assessment placed a value of $6.2 million on it.
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