Harrisburg-based New World Pasta Company, the largest producer and marketer of branded dry pasta in the US and Canada, has announced plans to build a new, high-speed, high capacity pasta manufacturing line with modern technologies similar to others in its system.
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Installation of the new pasta manufacturing line will begin in the fourth quarter of 2002 at one of New World Pasta’s North American plants, and the line is expected to be in operation by early 2003.
“We like our business, and we like what we’re seeing,” said John Denton, chairman and CEO of New World Pasta: “As a result of our acquisition of the Borden pasta businesses in July 2001, the success of our sales and marketing strategies, and our ongoing drive to become more cost- efficient, we’ve seen our brands and our businesses respond to our strategic initiatives.
“We’ve seen an enthusiastic response from the retail grocery trade, and we’ve also seen strong interest by customers and potential customers in the food service and industrial channels. We need more capacity to grow and meet our customer needs, and we expect this line to be the first in a series over the next several years. Adding these new high-speed manufacturing lines helps us to continue our efforts to expand our highly efficient manufacturing network to meet our customer needs, while lowering our overall cost structure.”
After its July 2001 acquisition of the Borden pasta business, New World Pasta had announced that it would focus its manufacturing activities in North America at four sites, two existing plants located in Winchester, VA. and Fresno, CA, and two plants acquired as part of the Borden transaction, located in St. Louis, MO. and Montreal, Quebec, Canada.
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By GlobalDataAs part of its overall acquisition strategy, which included a plant rationalization plan to reduce the Company’s overall cost structure and gain synergies throughout its manufacturing system, New World Pasta announced that it would close other manufacturing plants in Lebanon, PA., Chicago, IL., Louisville, KY., Lethbridge, Alberta (Canada) and Omaha, NE. On March 5, 2002, based on strong sales trends and other factors, New World Pasta announced that it would keep its Omaha plant open.
“We’re excited about the new line,” added Burt Freeman, VP, manufacturing: “Immediately after the Borden acquisition we embarked on an ambitious plan to reduce our overall manufacturing cost structure and balance our manufacturing capacity throughout the US. Our plan included the closing of older, inefficient plants, and installing equipment and revamping lines to increase capacity elsewhere in our US manufacturing network. The addition of this new line will give us more capacity, and additional flexibility to meet our customer’s needs, while lowering our overall cost structure even further.”
“We remain firmly committed,” Denton went on to say, “to our efforts to lead the category to growth. To do so, we believe we have a unique strategic focus on all segments of our business, including the branded-retail, private-label, food service and industrial businesses.
“We have been pleased to see that our initiatives did result in year-over-year sales growth over a sustained period of several months, but it quickly became apparent that we wouldn’t be able to continue our efforts, and maintain our historically strong service levels to our customers, without additional capacity.”
