NEWS

Heluva Good! plant, store in Wayne Co. to close

David Andreatta
@david_andreatta
Heluva Good Cheese

The Heluva Good! cheese packaging plant and the brand's popular country store in Wayne County will close this summer, putting 59 people out of work, its parent company, HP Hood LLC, confirmed Sunday.

The last day of operation for the plant on Pratt Road and the Heluva Good! Country Store on Barclay Road, both in Sodus, is scheduled for June 26, according to the company. Warehouse and delivery operations will continue until July 31.

Fifty-three employees work out of the plant, and the store employs a staff of six, according to the state Department of Labor, which last week issued a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, about the impending layoffs.

The notice read that workers would be laid off in phases from June 26 through Sept. 1. It was not immediately clear why the notice listed Sept. 1 as the last of the layoff period.

Heluva Good! has been a fixture in Sodus since its founding in 1925. It has cycled through a handful of owners through the years and has been a subsidiary of HP Hood of Lynnfield, Massachusetts, since 2004.

The closures are the result of an agreement between HP Hood and Schreiber Foods Inc., a dairy company based in Wisconsin, said HP Hood spokeswoman Lynne Bohan. Schreiber will continue to manufacture Heluva Good! cheese, Bohan said.

"The reason we made this really difficult decision is because in recent years the hard cheese category has become very price competitive, and while we firmly believe that the Heluva Good! brand is a strong, viable brand, we've just been unable to realize the margins necessary to successfully compete in this category as strictly a cut and wrap operation," Bohan said.

She added that the agreement does not affect the Heluva Good! dip manufacturing plant in Arkport, Steuben County, which will continue to be owned and operated by HP Hood.

DANDREATTA@Gannett.com

Twitter.com/david_andreatta