Fresno County food production facility to close in March

FRESNO, Calif. (KFSN) -- A ConAgra facility in Fresno County is preparing to shut down in March because of inefficiencies in production and aging equipment.

That means about 30 full-time and 70 seasonal workers will lose their jobs. And Abdul Hussein is a busy man, he's busy counting change and ringing up customers who come in his market to grab a bite to eat.

Some of those customers work at the ConAgra tomato plant in Helm. "It's hard to see them leaving," Hussein said.

Though the change will impact his business, Hussein is more concerned about the workers across the street whose source of income will be cut short. "It's going to hurt the business a little bit yeah," Hussein said. "But it's going to hurt them leaving because I know a lot of them who has been working there a long time."

A ConAgra spokesperson released this statement saying: "There are limitations to the overall capabilities of the plant that impact its ability to produce the paste as competitively as we can have it produced through other sources."

Dr. William Rice, a professor of marketing at Fresno State, understands why the gates on the plant are permanently closing. "If you have aa entrepreneur who wants to buy the plant and is willing to leave or have less efficiency in the equipment they'll buy that and probably on an individual case make a profit off of it," Rice explained. "But big corporations cannot when they have inefficiencies of production and aging equipment.