October 27,2014
Looking to relocate all bakery production from Oakland to Exeter by early 2016 Svenhards Swedish Bakery operations manager David Kunkel says production layoffs at their Exeter plant last week reported in the Visalia Times Delta are “only temporary” to allow maintenance workers to reconfigure the production flow for future at the sprawling facility on Industrial Drive.
One product wrapping crew was informed last week of the layoffs but only for the time being. They were the only crew at the mostly vacant site that the company has retained as a backup plant, until now.
Kunkel says – as reported in September – that the Oakland plant property was recently sold and now the sweet role maker has an 18 month lease before they must vacate there.
“We discovered we needed to reverse the production flow in Exeter with the new oven being installed in January” says Kunkel. ”We need to hire experienced equipment installers to move our production flow to the other side of the plant.”
Kunkel says he just returned from a trip to buy equipment for the new plant in Exeter.
“ Our plan is to relocate our entire operation to Exeter. Nothing has changed.”