ST. LOUIS — The closures of Tyson Foods plants in southern Missouri will be a hit to small towns that depend on the company for a combined 2,200 jobs.
The company announced plans on Monday to shut down four chicken processing plants, including two in southern Missouri. A plant in Dexter, in the Bootheel, will close Oct. 13. A plant in Noel, near the southwest corner of the state and about an hour south of Joplin, will close Oct. 20.
The Tyson plant in Noel employs about 1,500 people, said Mayor Terry Lance. As of the 2020 Census, Noel’s population totaled 2,100.
“They are, by far, the largest employer,†Lance said.
The closure of the plant in Dexter, a city of 7,900 people about an hour southwest of Cape Girardeau, will also be a hit to the area. The plant there employs 683 people, according to the city. The facility was first opened by the Swift Poultry Co. in the 1930s.
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Dexter City Administrator Dan Wyman said city officials will work to encourage economic development following the shutdown.
“We need to worry about the families here in town, and we need to be extremely smart about our expenses,†Wyman said in a statement.
The company announced the cost-cutting move as it posted a $417 million loss for the third quarter of the year. During a call with analysts Monday morning, leadership said results were hurt by a drop in prices compared with last year.
A Tyson spokesperson said in an email that employees are encouraged to apply for other jobs within the company. At the Dexter plant, the company is paying a $1,000 retention bonus to hourly employees who keep working up until the plant closes.
Tyson has another facility about 45 miles south of Noel in Springdale, Arkansas, and another in Berryville, Arkansas, about 70 miles east, Lance said. Still, he expects that some residents will move out of town after the closure.
A portion of the workers at the poultry plant in Noel immigrated to the U.S. from Latin America, Somalia and the Pacific Islands.
“Almost every culture, you’ll find in this plant,†said Abdullahi Hussein, who works in quality assurance at the facility.
Hussein said the plant was his first employer after he and his family moved to the U.S. from Somalia. He said he’d just heard the news.
RAISE, a refugee resettlement organization in the area, said it will support the state’s efforts to help immigrant workers affected by the closure. RAISE was founded in Noel in 2017 and is now located in Joplin.
The Noel processing plant was established in the mid-20th century, Mayor Lance said, first opened and operated by Ralston Purina. In the 1970s, Hudson Foods bought the plant, and in the 1990s, it was sold to Tyson.
Besides the Tyson plant, most of Noel’s business revolves around tourists who are drawn there to float and camp along the Elk River, which runs through town.
In an email to the Post-Dispatch, McDonald County Chamber of Commerce President and CEO John Newby called for the area to pull together and make a plan to rebound and focus on the local tourism industry. The community’s response to the closure, he wrote, will define Noel and McDonald County.
Lance noted that Noel doesn’t collect sales tax from the Tyson facility because it is a wholesaler. So if a retailer bought the building and moved in, it could become a new source of revenue for the city.
The two other plant closures announced Monday were facilities in North Little Rock, Arkansas, and Corydon, Indiana.
A spokesperson for the state’s Department of Economic Development called the decision to close the plants “unfortunate.†U.S. Rep. Jason Smith, a Republican, said his office will work with state and local officials to determine options for the families harmed by the closures, and that he will work to incentivize meat-processing jobs in the state.
Tyson announced two other plant shutdowns, earlier this year. In March the company said it would shut down chicken plants in Glen Allen, Virginia, and Van Buren, Arkansas, which together employed about 1,700 people, Reuters . Earlier this year, Reuters that Tyson laid off 228 corporate employees who declined to relocate to the company’s Arkansas headquarters.
Tyson employed 142,000 people worldwide, as of October, with 124,000 of them in the U.S., according to regulatory filings.