The international owner of Archway Cookies will close its plant in Boone. “Parmalot” spokesman Peter Lowe says the Boone bakery was the smallest of three Archway factories across the nation and none was operating near manufacturing capacity, so the Boone production will be taken over by the two other plants. Parmalot, based in Parma, Italy, bought Archway last November. The self-described number-one provider of homestyle cookies in the U-S, Archway bakes more than a billion cookies a year. He says the company didn’t take it lightly, and has offered a severance package and re-employment help to workers. 109 workers will be included in the layoffs, though Lowe says a few will stay on. The distribution business will continue, so 22 drivers will take “product” to northwestern states, though now it’ll be brought from the other bakeries to Boone for further distribution. Once, the Boone bakery made all the Archway cookies for the market region from the Mississippi River to the West Coast. Lowe says the equipment will be taken out and sold, and the multinational will try to find a buyer for the 80-thousand square foot plant in Boone.
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