The merger of US Foods with Sysco has jeopardized the expansion of US Foods in Seabrook, New Hampshire, the news website Newbury Port News reported. US Foods had proposed a $62 million expansion project of the Poland Springs warehouse located in the industrial park of Seabrook. The report said the expansion from its Peabody site to Seabrook would have brought hundreds of existing jobs and created 100 new ones.
Bill Manzi, Seabrook Town Manager, spoke with US Foods Corporate Real Estate Director Jeffrey Barnes upon reading about the merger in the news. Barnes was the one who coordinated the acquisition of the building in Poland Springs as well as the planned expansion to Seabrook. According to the report, Manzi said he got the impression from the discussion that the move was probably not going to take place. He also believed that none of those who were involved in the move to Seabrook had knowledge about the merger, the report said.
Manzi was quoted as saying in the report, "In a merger like this everything is frozen and I don't want to say definitively that the deal is off, but as we speak the deal is suspended. As of this point, they won't be continuing with the process to relocate here."
Manzi also said that he believed the expansion to Seabrook may not push through because substantial consolidation of assets usually takes place in mergers of this size so that the deal will work financially.
He told the news website, "From what I read, with this merger they're looking to make $600 million in back end savings. That kind of savings means the consolidation of locations and the elimination of jobs and redundancies. Sysco has a distribution center right over the border in Maine, and one in (Massachusetts), that could mean that U.S. Foods Peabody warehouse will close."
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