Barber Foods, which was recently acquired by AdvancePierre Foods, announced it was cutting 82 jobs at its Portland, Maine, plant. The layoffs resulted from upgrades to processing equipment at the facility, reports the Portland Daily Sun.

“This has nothing to do with the acquisition by AdvancePierre,” Barber Foods President David Barber said yesterday in a phone interview with the Sun. “This has been in the works for about a year that we were working (on) these production gains. We expected that these layoffs would have happened whether or not they purchased us.”

Barber said that the company’s administrative facility will likely be shut down early next year, as management merges with AdvancePierre’s operations in Cincinnati, Ohio, and Oklahoma. That merger would result in additional layoffs and job transfers. Further investment and upgrades to the Portland facility could result in additional layoffs as well, he added.

Source: Portland Daily Sun