BORDENTOWN CITY: Ocean Spray plant to close in two years

By Amber Cox
   BORDENTOWN CITY — Ocean Spray, which has had a manufacturing plant in the city on East Park Street for more than 60 years, has decided to leave town in two years.
   City and state officials began negotiations with the company last fall in an effort to keep it from moving to Pennsylvania.
   Ocean Spray now plans to close the plant in September 2013.
   Mayor James Lynch said, ”I can’t begin to tell you how disappointed I am,” he said. “We tried our best, for the last six months, to put something together for them. I’m beginning to wonder if it was real or if they were just trying to string us along.”
   The 62-acre property opened its 500,000-square-foot juice-bottling and manufacturing plant in 1943 and employs nearly 300 nonunion employees, according to the Ocean Spray website.
   State Assemblyman Joseph Malone, who represents Bordentown City where he lives, said “to say I’m disappointed is an understatement.
   ”I’m disappointed, but I’m not surprised,” he said. “I don’t think Ocean Spray ever really intended to deal in good faith with the city or the state with this issue. I think the general feeling was that they weren’t being really upfront. I think it’s a sad commentary for a relationship that has been built over 50 years that they couldn’t be a little more forthcoming with us.”
   Company spokesman John Isaf said Ocean Spray over the last several years, has decided it needs a “more efficient and modern Northeast manufacturing solution.” The Bordentown facility is the oldest and “highest cost facility in the manufacturing network,” he said.
   Ocean Spray will be relocating to an undisclosed area in Lehigh Valley and in a statement said, “this decision isn’t a reflection on our dedicated and engaged employees, it’s about the physical assets of Bordentown that are beyond anyone’s control.”
   The statement also said that the facility Ocean Spray needs for the future could not be duplicated on the current site’s footprint and rebuilding the Bordentown site didn’t make economic sense in the long term.
   However, Mayor Lynch said he was under the impression that the footprint of Bordentown could be modified.
   According to Mr. Isaf, Ocean Spray had to decide whether to renovate the Bordentown plant or “relocate (the) Bordentown operations to a newly built facility in a more transportation-friendly location.”
   He said tax abatements or other incentives did not add into the reason for moving. The company plans to invest $120 million into the new property, he said.
   ”We have a highly engaged and dedicated employee workforce in Bordentown,” according to the statement. “So the board has instructed management to offer the most generous incentive, relocation and transition packages in our cooperative’s history to ensure our employees are rewarded for their engagement and performance.”
   Mr. Isaf said Ocean Spray plans on staffing the new facility “with as many Bordentown employees as possible.”
   Mayor Lynch said when he asked Ocean Spray about their its plans to sell the property he was told that they “didn’t cross that bridge yet,” adding that city officials will closely scrutinize anything that goes into is proposed for the property.
   Mr. Malone said if Ocean Spray had stated from the beginning that it wasn’t going to work, he wouldn’t be so upset.
   ”It was just obvious to me that we were going through some kind of public relations gimmick for them,” he said. “The city has survived other crises and we will survive it again and we will more forward. I think Mayor Lynch is on top of this thing to the extent that we can be and we will do our best.”
   Mr. Malone could not elaborate on specifics but said the state, city and sewer authority worked on a number of different offers for Ocean Spray.
   ”Two issues that really strike to the very heart of my concern to the genuine nature of the discussion was one, they could have gotten very low-interest bonds through the state and the county that I worked on and they passed those up in December,” Mr. Malone said.
   ”The second thing is, I got a call from the person who handles all of their trucking and warehousing down at the Burlington Center, in February, and he knew nothing about what Ocean Spray was doing. Why they would not talk to their trucker and warehouse guy is beyond me if they were truly looking at all aspects of this thing. It just leaves me a little bit suspicious as to their real corporate integrity,” the assemblyman said.