General Mills is to shut three factories in the US as part of the company’s bid to cut costs and improve productivity.
In a stock-exchange filing, General Mills said it will close three facilities in Missouri it acquired in the last three years by the end of its 2029 fiscal year.
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The group said it would also conduct “the consolidation of assets at certain of our other facilities”.
In May, General Mills set out a “global transformation” programme to make the business more productive.
As a consequence, the company said yesterday (1 October) a pizza-crust facility in St. Charles in Missouri will shut by the end of June next year.
Two pet-food plants in Joplin will end production a month a later.
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By GlobalData“Production at these locations will transition to other facilities,” a spokesperson said.
General Mills declined to comment on the number of jobs that could be lost.
The Cheerios maker acquired the pizza-crust site when it bought Wisconsin-based TNT Crust three years ago.
The Joplin pet-food sites joined General Mills through the company’s $1.45bn acquisition of Whitebridge Pet Brands’ North American cat-food and pet-treats business last year.
In the SEC filing, General Mills said it expects to book $82m of restructuring charges from the closure of the three sites and the “consolidation” of the other, unnamed assets. The company declined to provide further details on its planned actions beyond the closures in Missouri.
In General Mills’ last full financial year, which ran to 25 May, net sales fell 2% to $19.5bn, with organic sales also declining 2%.
Last month, the company reported a fall in reported and organic sales for the first quarter of its new financial year.
Group reported sales and organic revenues were down 7% and 3%, respectively, at $4.5bn, in the three months to 24 August.
Reported volumes fell eight percentage points across the group in the quarter in reported terms, with price/mix a positive one point. North America retail saw a 16-point decline and the international business a two-point drop.
General Mills is looking to invest some of the savings it is generating to boost sales volumes.
Speaking after the company released its first-quarter results, chairman and CEO Jeff Harmening said management is “increasingly confident that our approach is working”.
He added: “So far, so good. We strengthened our pound share in eight of our top ten categories and now we’re holding pound share in pet.”
